Heir /er/
noun
Successor, Beneficiary
Hold on to your assets.
Our mission is to eliminate the loss of assets and unclaimed benefits intended for you and your loved ones. At Heir Atlas we work to bring a previously-unnoticed potential problem to your attention. Let’s get past assumptions and find certainty.
There’s a great reason to use heir Atlas…an enormous gap in conventional financial planning
If you have simply followed the basics of conventional financial planning, there is an excellent chance that you and your family have already lost, or will lose assets over the years.
“Mom died and we’re still not sure we found all of the bank accounts.”
“Dad is forgetting things and mom is gone. We don’t know his passwords, don’t know all of the accounts. Living 3,000 miles away prevented us from staying on top of things, or knowing when to pry.”
Conventional “retirement planning” addresses one item most of the time: how much money you’ll have at retirement. Maybe you’ll be asked about a Long-Term Care insurance policy. That’s usually it!
If you’ve ever said “She knows” or “My attorney has it all” you need Heir Atlas. Assumptions like that can be very costly. Assets will disappear as the beneficiary or family simply is not aware…
There are any number of situations you might find yourself in due to accidents, illness, and so on, long before you decide to die.
An integral part of asset protection is to understand “Unclaimed Property”
Finding “Unclaimed Property” is the fun part, and here’s where we start:
Scroll down to UNCLAIMED.ORG at the bottom of this page. Find the map on that site, click on your state (and that of family members), then find the “search” function and see if you can find unclaimed property for anyone.
understanding “Unclaimed Property” is just a start to a better understanding of what could happen to you…
There is a dark side to Unclaimed Assets.
Our Secret to Success? Trusted Parties.
The ability to hand off the information to someone you trust. A minimum of one, but more if possible…In other words, UPDATE AND TELL SOMEONE! And, do so every year. If the secret dies with you, or entertains only you while you’re in a coma (after that bungee jumping incident), that’s not much help, is it?
And that brings us to “Discarded Clients.” Often we rely on advisors to handle the responsibility to control the information, clearly based on the assumption that the advisor will always be available in the future, as in the past. Can we agree that, upon consideration, this appears to be unreasonable? As advisors become unavailable (retirement, etc.), the client takes on the “discarded” status. Again, a need to maintain Trusted Parties, and tell someone.
As to Financial Planning...
This is the area where most financial planning has a gaping hole. No, really! Has your advisor worked with you to “catalog” all of your assets? Have you notified a Trusted Party? And most important, has the catalog been updated and your Trusted Party(s) been so advised annually? Trusted Parties must be respected for their willingness to help in a time of need but must also be recognized as human. People we know, love, and trust will age, move, or might simply become unwilling or incapable of helping in the future. Financial Planning is more than simply amassing wealth, right? What happens both during and after that, if life takes a turn?
What Is An Asset?
An asset, as you might suspect, includes bank accounts, insurance policies, jewelry, stamp collections, and so on. But it would also include health insurance information, and so much more. The possibilities are endless. And don’t forget that $5,000 loan to Fred.
Updating "Roadmaps"
At Heir Atlas we ask that you perform a simple, yet difficult task. We ask that you “catalog” your assets. Please list type and / or substance, such as insurance policy or bank account, baseball cards, jewelry, etc. List the locations. The “roadmap” you create is essential to your control. Further, we ask that you update the roadmap annually and tell someone…every year for the rest of your life!