https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=fU8IDOX1ZMU
To request a free zoom video meeting to design your estate plan, click the following link and complete the short questionnaire: https://aeplaw.cliogrow.com/intake/7176090c4db516b907aa7ed491d9a8de — Some people have safe deposit boxes, and they put important legal documents in their safe deposit boxes. If not handled correctly, this can cause later problems. When someone dies owning a safe deposit box with no one else listed in the bank records as having access to the box, then a court order will be required, as part of the probate proceeding, to gain access to the box. And if keys to the box are not available, the box will have to be drilled. Many of these problems can be avoided by arranging your safe deposit box so that others have access to it when you pass away, and you can also give your family more control over your estate by arranging your accounts to give your family quick access to your accounts after your death, whether that is through beneficiary designation, POD, or living trust. This post is for informational purposes only and does not provide legal advice. Please do not act or refrain from acting based on anything you read on this site. Using this site or communicating with Rabalais Estate Planning, LLC, through this site does not form an attorney/client relationship. Paul Rabalais Estate Planning Attorney www.RabalaisEstatePlanning.com Phone: (225) 329-2450
Another asset is vehicles. My Dad passed in Jan. & his new truck & nice motorcycle are in his name only, not jointly with my Mom, so we have to wait through probate to be able to sell them. Could be a year we’re told. I now know to set up vehicles jointly with a beneficiary listed for quick transfer later.
Banks legally OWN your money when you deposit monies in them. Do the banks own the contents of the safety deposit box in the same way?
👇lmao si true
Great advice for not to ever use a safe deposit box
In Oregon you have to own the safe deposit box to get in it even if you have the key. We took the parents to the bank and filled out the paperwork to make both my sister and I owners of the box with my parents. That is where the will, and poa documents are.
safe deposit boxes . going away. too much trouble for banks. lowers their profit margin
true. they can’t leverage your valuables to gamble with when they aren’t in the system on their balance sheets.
I’m skeptical about keeping a safe deposit box at all. You can’t access it outside banking hours and if something happens to the banking system a person could be locked out of it.
NO way..I keep mine in a fireproof….portable safe. It helps that i am retired and in a town home. Grabbing it is first priority if a fire breaks out.
It seems to me that there should be a process to store a copy of the will with the government decades before someone dies. We depend on a paper will that might be hard to find and the house might burn down.
This is exactly why estate planning lawyers tell their clients NOT to put Wills and trust documents in safe deposit boxes. Put ’em anywhere else, but NOT in a bank safe deposit box!
All this could be avoided by a 20 dollar fire box from Walmart that you keep in your closet.
After my mom passed away, we had my dad add my sister to his safe deposit box but not give her a key. That made him feel more comfortable doing it. I was added to the checking account as an authorized signer but no checkbook. The day after he passed away, we had my sister take the key, go to the bank, and empty the box without notifying the bank of his passing. A few days later, my sister closed the now empty safe deposit box. In Florida, if the bank knows of the passing of any of the owners of a safe deposit box, it is sealed (all access denied without a court order). At the bank I worked at, the safe deposit staff would review the obits every day to see if any boxes need to be sealed. Also never store the original will in the safe deposit box. A copy is okay.
I had a theft from a bank in Crosby, Texas a couple years back. I lost my wedding diamonds and some other things in the theft. Police did nothing. My name was the only one on the sign-in sheet. The thieves were probably the ones that used personal information to file fraudulent taxes in the same time frame. I believe it happened because employees left me alone for long periods in the vault between accessing the box and returning it. Anyone could have methodically gone through boxes with copied keys. Either that or an inside job. I trusted the security of the bank.
This BS my father bank pulled on me. They claim there is no safe deposit box. Yet Corp. Tell me go to his branch . Just the run around, keeping telling if there is no charge on his statement then it doesn’t exist. So I had to correct her that the Bank offered safe deposit box for individual in good standing and kept a large monthly balance.
Wow, think about what happens if the accounts are margin accounts.. shudder at the thought. Would it not be best if children was on the box too?
Thank you for what you do. Much appreciated.