You took the time to sit down with your attorney and sign your Will. Now that it has been signed and witnesses have been found, you are left with a stack of originals. The lawyer may store your originals for you in their office but where do you store your copies? The kitchen drawer is generally not the best place for original documents.

A will can be greatly affected by natural disasters. Flooding can cause a will to become soaked, ruining all of the work that went into the document. And after a move, it’s easy for a will to get lost in the shuffle of boxes. This is why where you store your originals is important to consider.

A safe at home

In so far as home safe storage is chosen, make sure the lockbox that you purchase is reasonably rated for a house fire and for a flood. Also, make sure to anchor the safe to a floor or wall to prevent it from falling over in an earthquake. However, having a safe at home, locked up with no others having a key or even knowing that a safe exists, is to set up another locked door or storage area for your family members after your death.

These locked up documents can be a real issue. Ideally, there should be at least one other person in the household or family who also knows the combination or has a copy of the safe’s key.

Your attorney's office

A large number of estate attorneys will hold your original Will for safekeeping and also have processes in place for the distribution of documents upon death.

Law firms close too. Attorneys retire and sometimes even move out of state. Even larger firms close from time to time. It would be better to let your children know the name of the attorney who prepared your will and to get a receipt for the storage of the original will.

A safe deposit box

The security of a safe deposit box is great, but you’ll have trouble having it opened by someone with the proper ID after you die. The bank can be difficult to work with, often requiring court papers to be able to open the box in order to search for a will. In many cases, a safe deposit box is better used for storing items such as deeds, savings bonds and jewelry.

Digital storage

Scans don’t burn, flood or get lost in a move. You can organize them, update them and pull them up on your phone.

The biggest limitation is that typically a scanned copy of a document is not accepted as the original in probate proceedings. Florida does recognize electronic wills (with very specific signing requirements), but such wills must be stored by a qualified electronic custodian. Thus a digital copy is generally considered a backup or alternatively a map, and not the actual legal document.

What we'd actually recommend

Store your originals in a safe place and keep copies of the same documents in a location that your loved ones can easily find.

So, a digital safe like DokuDocs can store all these documents too. In fact, every account on DokuDocs already has a private vault for all of your documents which are, of course, encrypted with AES-256, the same type of encryption that online banks use these days. In addition to storing your will, your trust, your powers of attorney, your health care forms and more, for each of these you can record where the original copy is kept.

With a Family and Legacy account, you can choose which people have access to your documents. Every month, Auto-Alert checks for status changes and notifies the recipients of your choice by email and regular mail. There is a 4 to 5 day wait period for any attempts to download your documents to allow you to decline access in the event of an unexpected request. Legacy members can also list 5 or more professionals (attorneys, CPAs, etc.) for the family of the account holder to reference when needed.

Before you close the folder

Identify where original documents are kept. Inform two people of where original documents are kept. Scan original documents and upload them to DokuDocs. Review documents from time to time, especially when there has been a change in the life of the user.

We hope you find this article informative and useful. However, this article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have questions regarding the disposition of original documents, you should speak with your attorney.