shared-access-product-feature

2 minute read

Trust & Will Enables Seamless Access to Digital Estate Plans with New Shared Access Feature

Expansion of financial advisors and estate planning attorneys help families better prepare for the future

Cody Barbo

Cody Barbo, @codybarbo

Founder & CEO, Trust & Will

SAN DIEGO, CA - April 29, 2021 - Trust & Will, a modern approach to online estate planning, announced today its new Shared Document Access feature to help families better plan for their financial futures. Shared Document Access is a new feature that enables family members, financial advisors, and other professionals to gain instant access to a digital estate plan. As more financial assets and personal accounts become digitized, including cryptocurrencies and social media profiles, a process for enabling secure access to these accounts is more important than ever. 

Shared Document Access for Members 

The Shared Document Access feature responds to the common request from members to share estate planning documents quickly and securely with others. Members can now proactively share their documents electronically with important friends and family, such as the executor of their estate, guardians of their minor children and pets, as well as beneficiaries, and even financial advisors. By sharing plans with loved ones in advance, families can better plan for their financial futures. This also allows executors and other people named in a plan to better understand and discuss the implications of their role, including what to do in case of a medical emergency.

Shared Document Access for Advisors 

The Shared Document Access feature is also available to the Trust & Will for Advisors Network, which currently includes more than 2,500 financial advisors across the U.S. The advisor dashboard provides interactive tools for financial advisors to offer complete estate planning services to their clients with the ability to track and manage their clients' plans. By integrating the Shared Document Access tool into the advisor dashboard, financial advisors now have more insight and visibility into their client's estate with real-time updates on documents and status changes, ensuring they always have access to the latest and most relevant version of their clients' plans.

"We launched the Shared Document Access feature to simplify the once-complex process of estate planning even further," says Cody Barbo, Founder and CEO of Trust & Will. "Many Americans still struggle to create an estate plan, and our mission is to enable everyone to leave a legacy by removing as many barriers as possible. Hopefully, the days of looking through filing cabinets and lockboxes for a set of papers with instructions are long gone. By incorporating your family or financial advisor directly into your estate plan through a seamless digital process, we are expanding the support network for anyone going through the process of creating a plan."

To learn more about Shared Document Access and how to securely share estate planning documents with loved ones or personal representatives, visit https://trustandwill.com/learn/shared-access-estate-planning

Attorney Support 

In addition to new digital sharing features, Trust & Will is also actively expanding their estate planning attorneys' network to support their members. The Attorney Support Network is now available in six states: California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio. This feature is helpful for those with more complex estates and includes line-by-line document review to help members gauge their total net worth, uncover potential tax issues and address any other legal questions that arise during an estate plan. To learn more, visit https://trustandwill.com/attorney-support.

ABOUT TRUST & WILL

Since 2017, Trust & Will has helped more than 200,000 members successfully plan their legacy. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, Trust & Will is on a mission to provide families a better way to plan for the future. We make estate planning simple, affordable, and accessible for everyone by providing a secure way to set up your plan online in minutes. We’ve modernized estate planning with a design-first approach, layered on top of incredible customer support to help people throughout the process. In response to COVID-19, Trust & Will launched the Frontline Heroes Initiative, which has provided more than 11,000 free estate plans to healthcare professionals and teachers. To learn more, visit https://trustandwill.com​.