Why your family might not inherit your money?
Many people have hard-earned assets such as saving accounts in banks, insurance policies, stock options, company stocks, real estate, and RSUs.
We all believe that if anything happened to us, these assets would go to our families. Unfortunately, that might not be the case. It is quite possible that your hard-earned money and assets will be legally “stolen” after you’re gone, instead of reaching your family.
How can that happen? There are a few reasons.
Reason 1: Complex assets
These days, many people have various types of assets, such as bank accounts, insurance policies, stock options, company stocks, real estate, and RSUs.
In addition to being complex, these assets are usually stored in different places – various asset management systems, funds, banks, insurance companies, etc. This makes it particularly difficult to track them even for the owners, let alone their families.
Reason 2: Cross-country assets
Many people, especially expats, have assets residing in different countries. When expats move to a new country, they usually open local bank accounts, have local insurance, might buy some real estate, etc.
Having diverse and complex assets makes it very difficult for your family even to identify them. But when you add the fact that some of these assets are in countries other than that in which the family members reside, the estate seems like a chimera.
Reason 3: Most asset management companies and funds globally don’t have a legal obligation to trace heirs
Often companies which hold your assets don’t have legal obligation to look for your family members if anything happens to you.
So wait! If the companies storing your assets don’t look for your family members, and your heirs don’t know about these assets or where they are, how can they inherit them?
Exactly. Your family probably won’t inherit your money at all.
How big is the problem, actually?
Very big indeed. As of 2019, in the US alone, there were approximately $80 billion in unclaimed assets, according to the New York Times. And this amount is growing at an alarming and accelerating rate – approximately $5 billion per year, currently!
This is the situation in the US alone. There are no reliable statistics for the total value of unclaimed assets in the rest of the world but if they are approaching $100 billion in the US, you can imagine their value globally.
So what will happen with the assets?
In many cases, family members do not know where to search for the assets and how to claim ownership, primarily due to the reasons discussed above:
- the family doe not know in which asset management system or bank the assets are stored;
- the assets reside in different countries;
- the assets are complex, and the family doesn’t know how to claim them.
As a result, your money remains in the companies which store it, instead of being inherited by your family.
How can you ensure your assets will be inherited by your family if anything happens to you?
DGLegacy is a service which ensures that in the event of your death, people whom you assign as beneficiaries will be informed about your assets so that they can claim ownership.
The service allows you to easily list your assets, such as bank accounts, insurances, company stock, stock options, and RSUs, and to assign beneficiaries to them. You don’t enter any confidential information such as the amount of your money, the value of your stocks, keys or passwords – only general information about the assets which will allow your beneficiaries to find them.
And most importantly – the DGLegacy service has a custom-engineered HeartBeat protocol so that, in the event of your death, the beneficiaries will be informed about the assets so they can claim ownership and take possession. The confirmation protocol isa safe procedure which includes -mail notifications and a phone call from a dedicated executive assistant to eliminate the possibility of false triggering of messages to your beneficiaries.
The service provides many additional features which can help you ensure that your family will inherit your assets. One such feature is the legal package, through which a representative from a renowned law firm will engage with each of your beneficiaries to guide and support them in the process of finding and claiming ownership of assets.
With the DGLegacy service, you can find peace of mind – it ensures that your family will be informed about the assets if anything happens to you.
