Categories
Blog

What you should do to protect a loved one with dementia

The problem:

Dementia is a type of cognitive difficulty that inflicts a person and affects their ability to perform everyday activities in an independent fashion. Mild cognitive impairment is a classification for individuals who may be showing early signs of dementia.

The statistics reveal that dementia is surprisingly pervasive. One in 10 older Americans suffer from dementia. According to 2022 research, by Columbia University (Irving Medical Center) about 22% of U.S. adults 65 years and older have dementia and another 22% have mild cognitive impairment.

As a country, the U.S. population is getting older, and fast. Consider this fact: by the next 30 years the population of individuals who are 65+ years old will increase by a whopping 70% (from 54 million people to 95 million people).

As our population ages, you can bet that the total number of people with dementia will increase by quite a lot and is likely to be 2 times more pervasive in 15 years than it has been thus far.

Concrete actions to safeguard loved ones.

One does not have to wait until signs of mild cognitive impairment or dementia start to become evident in order to take action. It is best to consider that it is mandatory for all adults in the U.S. who are 55+ to have a comprehensive set of estate plan documents in place. The importance and need is pronounced for individuals who are 65+ and do not (yet) have this important protection in place.

If a loved one is showing signs of cognitive decline or worse; there is much that will be needed to be done to support and care for the individual as the disease progresses. But, a critical action is to have certain (legal) estate planning documents in place to ensure that their wishes are recorded and will be fulfilled long after the cognitive impairment renders them unable to make their own decisions.

These documents are:

1. A Will (or a Revocable “Living” Trust)

This document expresses how the assets owned by the individual will be distributed among the heirs when they are gone. The will must be presented to a court so it can be validated and thereafter probated to ensure that the distribution is in accordance with the wishes contained in it. In the case of a “living” trust, a Trustee is appointed to ensure that the individual’s assets are used optimally for the benefit of the individual for as long as they are alive and then, distributed to the named heirs after they are gone.

2. Health Care Power of Attorney

This document names a specific person to serve as the representative of the individual when they are incapacitated and unable to make health care decisions for themselves. This is a particularly critical document in the case of a loved one afflicted with dementia. Having this document makes it easier for the healthcare representative to do what is needed to provide the best quality of life for the loved one.

3. Financial Power of Attorney

Much like the Healthcare Power of Attorney, this document names a specific person to serve as the representative of the individual to take financial decisions and handle such matters. Again, a particularly critical document in the case of a loved one afflicted with dementia. Having this document makes it easier for the financial representative to do what is needed to provide the best quality of life for the loved one.

The OneDigitalTrust™ platform is designed to help users to take concrete steps to safeguard loved ones who are showing signs of cognitive impairment or dementia. The service is designed to step a user through a simple experience to generate ALL THREE of the above documents – easily and effortlessly.

Ensure that no one can say that something is wrong with the documents

What makes this complex is that every state (court) in the U.S. maintains its own statutes (rules) regarding estate planning, and financial institutions as well as medical / hospital facilities maintain their own standards. Only a trusted platform like OneDigitalTrust™ can ensure that the details and nuances at the state level have been adhered to for each document such as – proper captioning and labeling, statute citations, references and correct notarization blocks. This level of precision ensures that when the document is presented, it will be recognized by local courts, financial institutions and medical facilities as bonafide, if the printed instructions (for each document) to execute the document are followed

The best part is that the service is available at a highly-affordable price of $199 for the first year and $39 each year thereafter (unlimited updates) and may be available from your financial institution for a lower price.

The OneDigitalTrust™ platform provides so much more than just legal documents. Users can catalog their assets and liabilities to ascertain their probate exposure to take specific action on certain assets, utilize the smart digital document vault, visualize how their estate will be distributed in graphical form, create a pet trust, bequeath items of sentimental value to loved ones and write bite-sized “memoirs” on the most important experiences of their lives for loved ones to read and draw inspiration from…and so much more.

To create an account:

https://app.onedigitaltrust.com/odt/intro/register

Or reach out to us for a demonstration to explore how we may augment your institution’s product & service offerings:

https://onedigitaltrust.com/connect/

Categories
Blog

Inheritance Planning Crossword Puzzle #1

Estate IQ

Inheritance Planning Crossword Puzzle #1

First off, thanks for taking the time to engage with our crossword puzzle.

OneDigitalTrust is committed to increasing knowledge about estate and inheritance planning. We’ve designed our platform to make users more educated and knowledgeable about the inheritance planning process and terminology so they’ll be better informed about their choices.

Bottom line: the 65+ population in the U.S. is growing at an unprecedented rate. Between 2020 and 2060 the number of older adults will increase by 69% (from 54 Million to 95 Million); during the same period, the 85+ population is projected to TRIPLE (from 7 Million to 19 Million)1.

We believe that at some point you’re likely to serve as an executor (or a support role) in the estate plan of a loved one or a friend in some way, so learning more about estate & inheritance planning makes sense. We’re motivated to think of creative ways to spread awareness about this topic and share important tidbits of information.

Source: Population Reference Bureau (www.prb.org)

If you are a trusted provider-institution serving your customer’s financial needs, why not add inheritance planning to your range of offerings? Fill out the form on this page and we’ll show you how you can empower your customers to complete essential end-of-life planning, using our customizable, white-label platform. We offer several flexible pricing options for your institution to make the platform available to your customers, branded as yours.

INSTRUCTIONS:

– Click on a clue (Across or Down) and the word will highlight in the puzzle – Type in the correct word to solve; click enter – If correct, a green check will appear; else a red cross will appear The puzzle is below – good luck completing it!

Categories
External Articles

Why Prioritizing Personal Wellness Can Be A Win For Institutions, Customers, And Employees

The following is an abstract of an article that was originally published in Forbes on April 18th, 2022.

The Covid-19 crisis spawned severe and synchronized economic scarring worldwide, leaving a $16 trillion price tag in its wake. But it is the human scarring that has been its most sizable consequence—the disappearance of over 3 million lives translated as 20 million years of life lost. The impacts of such an unprecedented crisis on personal wellness are here to stay.

The Challenge

  • How firms can be more responsive to the needs of their employees
  • How employee well-being can potentially impact organizations
  • Understanding the lasting impact the pandemic will have

The Opportunity

  • Similar to the role organizations played in the stimulation of demand for health & life insurance and retirement plans, they can also positively influence customer and employee well-being factors
  • There are many ways organizations can encourage and support employee self-care, that also improve the organization’s growth goals
  • The boundaries between work and personal continue to blur and opportunities exist to transform relationships from transactional to relational
  • Employees are looking to employers to help them find resources that make their lives easier including personal and family wellness elements

The pandemic has upended many old transactional conventions, and businesses are up to the task of selecting and implementing relational replacements that are better suited to do both—deliver a societal impact while also enhancing the economic performance of the firm.

About The Author:

Sonny Kapoor is CEO of OneDigitalTrust – it offers a B2B estate planning platform for firms to offer to their stakeholders.

Categories
Blog

How Estate Planning Can Help Institutions Win the Loyalty of Customers & Employees

Deliver More for Your Customers and Employees with Affordable Access to Estate Planning

Estate planning is an essential part of planning for the future, though many people fail to plan for this eventuality. As an institution, helping your customers and employees create an estate plan isn’t just a perk; it says that you care about them and their family. It’s a simple way to show them that you care about their personal and family wellness.

While estate planning options are not mandated, it is important for you to offer it to your customers and employees. It’s about wanting to go above and beyond and provide that extra service. In reality, estate planning is essential, because the unintended consequences of not having any plan can be rather painful.

Here’s why offering estate planning to customers and employees is good for them and good for institutions.

Build Trust With Your Clients

By offering estate planning, you can build upon the trust you already have with your customers and employees. On one hand, offering an added benefit of estate planning solutions is a natural fit with clients who already trust you with one part of their life’s planning. If someone has already converted to a customer and trusts you with one item, it’s much easier to provide another complementary service. 

On the other hand, offering this added benefit like legacy and estate planning is a simple way to establish even more trust. Customers subconsciously understand that you have a comprehensive focus, and care about the holistic picture of someone’s financial life, not just the bottom line. It also shows that you truly care about them and the future of their family even when they are gone.

Improve Your Customer Service

Estate planning is an added benefit and a way to augment the high caliber customer service you already offer your clients. It’s a natural extension that gives your clients that extra feeling that you care and are looking out for their best interest, while delivering an experience they would get nowhere else. 

It Increases Long-Term Wellness

Estate planning isn’t just about designating where wealth goes, but improving the long-term wellness of the family. When customers are gone, an estate plan designates where their wealth goes, making the process of dealing with a loved one’s death easier and less stressful. When a person does not have an estate plan, this can cause confusion and indecision (and the laws of the state (probate court) will take control and decide who gets what), further upsetting an already grieving family. When you offer estate planning as an institution, it shows that you truly care about your customers and employees as actual people with lives and families outside of the company. 

It Stems Attrition

Employees want more out of work than just a paycheck. They are looking for organizations that share the same values as them and care about them as people, not just as warm bodies filling a position. By offering benefits such as estate planning, you show that you care about your employees as people and that you hold the same values as them, like the importance of family. This can also lead to increased employee loyalty, which can stem attrition and instead, improve employee retention. 

It’s an Extension of Your Services

You are already helping your client plan for things like retirement and asset strategy. Estate planning is an integral part of the financial planning conversation and an extension of your services. You are already having these types of conversations with your clients, so incorporating estate planning is a natural fit. Naturally, your customers will look to you for the trusted choice in building their estate plan, and we know that OneDigitalTrust is a simple way to offer a solution they will trust. 

Prioritize Relationships Over Transactions

We’ve touched on this throughout this article, but finally, offering estate planning to your clients and employees brings a relational side to your business. Estate planning isn’t about your bottom line; it’s about the human lives of the people who do the planning and their loved ones. It allows you to move past the business side of your interactions with customers and employees and create deeper, trusting relationships that build loyalty. 

At OneDigitalTrust, we have reinvented personal legacy and estate planning, helping users create and maintain their plan through all life states and events, and helping advisors and institutions provide an even better customer experience. Life moves too fast for old-school estate planning approaches. Get your customers and employees an “always on” capability right in their pocket. Trust us, they will thank you for it!

Categories
Blog

Here’s Why More than 65% of Your Customers Have Not Created a Legally Valid Plan to Distribute their Wealth When They’re Gone

5 Reasons People Fail to Do any Estate Planning

There’s a huge number of your customers and clients who haven’t created a viable plan to distribute their wealth when they are gone. In fact, 65% of American adults have not created a viable plan to distribute their wealth. 

The bottom line: this number hasn’t changed much in 30 years, leaving a significant population that is unprotected. Here’s why we should not be okay with these numbers:

Creating a plan to distribute your wealth is like an insurance policy. It gives you both the security and peace of mind knowing that there is a plan for your wealth when you are gone. The unintended consequences that surviving loved ones suffer through are both emotionally painful and costly. The worst part is, that if a person passes without a plan in place (aka “intestate”), the assets are distributed based upon age-old guidelines set by each state, regardless of emotional relationships forged through the individual’s lifetime. Distribution must follow a formula for inheritance, set by the state, which in many cases may be over 50 years old and coupled with a highly bureaucratic process deemed obsolete in terms of applicability in today’s day and age (e.g. unmarried partners).  

So why have so many failed to plan for this eventuality?

JackHenry

#1 Procrastination Perfection

If there is one thing many of us are good at, it’s procrastinating. And clearly not just with our household chores we have no interest in doing–especially when there are so many other more exciting things to do! But the truth is, no one thinks that this will happen to them, or that when they do pass away, that it will be at a ripe old age and that there’s plenty of time to plan later. It’s like we believe we are invisible to death. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have a cloak of invisibility that hides us from death until we are in our 90s. 

#2 It’s Morbid

Planning for what happens with our assets after we die is morbid in and of itself. Who wants to think about death? It’s hard to not only think about death, but it’s difficult to also think about who will get a portion of your wealth when you are gone. Let’s just all be honest, and say that these topics are not necessarily fun and joyful things to consider. Your customers are feeling the same way! 

#3 Toss the Salt

Don’t cross a black cat, don’t walk under a ladder and don’t break a mirror. Many are flat out superstitious about the subject. Somehow we’ve told ourselves that even thinking about death and the future is like a self-fulfilling prophecy and that if we don’t think about our own passing, it won’t happen. But throwing salt over your shoulder isn’t going to dispel death from your future. There are two things certain in life: taxes and death. So until someone creates an elixir of life, planning ahead is important!

#4 Expenses List

We understand that many feel legacy planning is costly and requires hiring expensive professionals. Why pay money to plan for a future that you aren’t in? But is anything more important than the family left behind? That’s why OneDigitalTrust’s pricing model is really affordable and easy for institutions to bulk purchase and offer to their customers and employees. 

Remember, lives change and estate planning needs to change with it. Whether someone is getting married, welcoming a new baby into your life, is bequeathed an inheritance, or has another big life change, our pricing makes it affordable to change the plan when you need to. OneDigitalTrust’s periodic estate health check is designed to enable your employees and customers ensure that their plan stays lockstep with their life-stage changes

#5 Overwhelming

Finally, estate planning can be overwhelming. Not only are each state’s statutes different, and they can change at any time, but the legalese is enough to make anyone’s head spin! For the average adult that doesn’t follow these laws and work in them regularly, it can be extremely overwhelming, causing many to avoid estate planning altogether. You can answer, or pre-populate answers, for the customer’s basic info, making it easier to encourage estate planning and get your customer started. It also makes it simple for users to create and maintain their plan through all their life stages. Our program makes it easy for you (and your customers), taking the overwhelm out of the equation.

Over 65 percent of Americans have avoided estate planning for one reason or another, but the biggest reasons center around: procrastination, access to a simple and affordable platform that users can trust, and the depressing reality of death. That is why we have reinvented personal legacy and estate planning for the digital-age. Like a 401k, legacy and estate planning is better delivered by trusted institutions a customer is already working with. With our solutions, your customers can create a viable estate plan in a fraction of the time, headache, and complexity of the traditional process.