Yes, You Really Do Need Electronic Copies of Your Estate Planning Documents
(…we swear we’re not your mother. But we’re giving very mother-like advice.)
At Ladimer Law, we strongly recommend that once your estate planning documents are signed, you download and save electronic copies.
Yes — we print your originals. Yes — we store copies for our files. But in the moment of an emergency, the person who needs those documents is not us. It’s your agent. And when the ER nurse, the new financial advisor, the new custodian at your investment firm, or your kid who flew home from college needs to prove quickly that they have authority to act… you don’t want the next sentence out of their mouth to be: “Let me see if Ladimer Law is open.”
Spoiler alert:
Ladimer Law is not available at 8pm on a Saturday.
And your lack of organization should not become our emergency.
Step 1: Download the PDFs and save them somewhere obvious.
We send them to you for a reason. Download them, save them, and label them clearly.
We STRONGLY encourage you to save them in the exact same place you store other important things — like your tax returns, your social security statements, and your investment account summaries.
This creates a pattern and a habit. And habits are magic in emergencies.
Because if your family knows, “Mom keeps everything in this one place on her computer” — they actually have a fighting chance of finding them.
Step 2: Share the email addresses of your agents with us.
Your agents (health care agents, powers of attorney, personal representatives, trustees, etc.) are the ones who will need these documents the most.
If you give us their email addresses, we will send electronic copies directly to them too.
This is one of those tiny administrative steps that dramatically changes the actual usability of your estate plan in real life. Because the documents sitting in your inbox or your downloads folder aren’t helping anyone if you’re unconscious in the ER.
Step 3: Share your passwords. (We know… but really.)
Your agents cannot access your beautifully organized folder if they cannot access your computer.
If you don’t already have a way to share your passwords or your master password (1Password, LastPass, etc.), it is critical that you do. Whether it’s a master password written down in a secure place, or sharing the vault access with your agents — someone needs to be able to get in when you cannot.
Why this matters in real life:
When you keep your electronic estate plan in the same place as your tax returns, it becomes extremely easy to share the documents with new doctors, new financial institutions, new wealth managers, or anyone else who asks.
And in estate planning, the world is constantly asking.
Financial institutions, especially, love to ask for copies. And you will inevitably get new ones over time. (It’s 2025 — we all change custodians like we change our phones.)
Bottom line:
You hired us to prepare a thoughtful, protective, well-drafted plan.
Now your job is to make it findable.
We are here to draft your legal strategy.
We are not here to manage your digital filing system.
So download your documents, put them where they live with the rest of your important data, and make sure your agents can actually access them.
This is how your estate plan works in the real world — not just on signing day, but on the day someone actually needs it.
Until Next Time,
Julie