Page 7 - December Mag 2025small

ESTATE PLANNING

Atty. John J. Urban

Lessons in

the Law

Where is the Will?

ost of my articles are based on real life sit- safe I keep updates on passwords and estate information
uations. The latest death of a client has me they will need to handle my affairs.
wondering what to do next. The decedent Most people do not want to tell their children everything
left for me and my former law partner in- they own, but we all do regularly update our records as
M structions on what to do when he dies. He to what we do have. Tax season is always a good time to
gave us the combination to his safe and review what you have and make the necessary updates.
the password to his computers. He also preplanned his ar- Keep those tax returns in a safe place—assessable to your
rangements. family when you die. Those tax returns are a good starting
Seems like a slam dunk and things would go smooth- place to figure out what a person may own. It’s not all in-
ly when he died. The funeral part worked out fine then clusive, but it is a good starting place.
the problems. The safe combination did not work and the Do you want to give a copy of your Wills, Powers of At-
password apparently had been changed. He told us ev- torney, Advanced Directives to your family? Some people
erything that we would need to handle his estate and trust do and some people do not. It is necessary and imper-
was in the safe or on his computer. Now we can’t get ac- ative that those documents can be found if you get sick
cess to anything. I had to hire a company to open the safe and when you die. If they can’t be found, they then can’t
and we are waiting for the mail to see if we can identify his help you.
financial accounts. Everything he did was done electroni- Planning is important but updating is also important. Can
cally so our hands were tied. the person you want to handle your affairs find your stuff?
After searching his house, we began to find information Questions, comments or ideas about future articles con-
that helped us establish what he owed. tact me at jurban.gcu@GCUusa.com
The point here is that you need to have in place a sys-
tem that gives your Executor or Trustee the information
necessary to handle the estate. If you change safe com-
binations and passwords you need to update that infor-
mation with the people you have chosen to handle your
estate. This is easier said than done because passwords
are usually updated on a regular basis. I regularly ask my
children if they know the combination of my safe. In that

GCU MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2025 5