What is iGoodbye.com?
iGoodbye.com is a simple, easy to use and inexpensive service that holds your electronic documents in trust during your lifetime. Documents are released to the recipients you specify only after we verify that you have passed away.
Why use iGoodbye.com?
Typically clients store copies of wills, trusts, account passwords or special instructions to heirs. Many people want to leave a message, a list of instructions or details about their assets to heirs after their death, but don’t necessarily want to give this information to an heir before that time.
Is iGoodbye.com only useful for wills and trusts?
Certainly not! You can store any file that you wish kept in trust until your death. People have many reasons to keep certain information private and do not wish this information to be given to heirs until they have passed away. We don’t just store wills and trusts. Examples could include the true value or location of paintings, antiques, stamps or other collectibles. It could be details about a family business or even personal material such as stored love letters or information about a child’s true parentage. Increasingly we are doing our banking, investing and communicating online. A document that lists all bank and investment accounts along with their username and password information would place immediate control of your assets in the hands of a spouse and child in the event of your death. Otherwise they might spend months petitioning this information from the appropriate authorities.
Doesn’t my attorney keep a copy of my wills and trusts?
Many attorneys will keep copies of wills and trusts for their clients. This is fine, but this approach suffers from some of the same shortcomings as a safe deposit box (paper documents at risk of flood, fire, tampering, etc) and inconvenience for geographically scattered recipients. We recommend our service as an adjunct, not a replacement for the services provided by your attorney.
Are my documents on iGoodbye encrypted?
Yes. iGoodbye provides military grade encryption of your documents. We offer three choices. You can either do your own encryption (with a package like PGP), use your own own password with our encryption engine, or use our engine and our system password. If you do your own encryption, or use your own password with our engine, you must ensure that your intended recipients know the password to decrypt your documents. We have no way to decrypt if this password is lost or forgotten. If you use our key, we can decrypt the documents for your heirs and send the documents to them. It is our express policy never to examine the contents of our client’s documents. We recommend using PGP as it is the most private and secure option.
How does iGoodbye verify a client’s death?
We require a death certificate from an heir. We then contact the local municipality to verify the validity of the certificate. Once the validity is ascertained, the heir is permitted to download any documents that have been stored for them.
Is an electronic document (like a will or trust) enforceable in a court of law?
This is an area of law that is starting to catch up with current technology. Thus the laws still vary depending on your locale. We recommend keeping paper notarized copies of important documents in a safe place and using electronic documents as a backup, as well as proof that the paper originals have not been tampered with. There are an increasing number of “electronic notaries” that can assist you in creating electronic documents that are easily accepted by the courts.
What are the Registration options?
When you register, there are asked several yes/no checkbox questions. You are free to change these anytime by logging in to your account. The questions are as follows:
1. Require death proof from recipient Yes No
Answering yes means that you want us to require a verified death certificate from your heirs before releasing their files.
2. Require identity proof from recipient Yes No
Checking yes means that you want us to require your heirs to send us notarized proof of identity (drivers license, passport etc.)
3. Search for recipients if death verified Yes No
Checking yes means that if we become aware that you may no longer be alive (e.g. your credit card fails to renew your account, and we are unable to contact you, we will then attempt to contact your recipients. If you check "no" then we will simply wait to hear from your recipients.
4. Give recipient access to documents if they have a financial power of attorney? Yes No
Answering "yes" means that we can release documents to your heirs if they can prove they have a financial power of attorney, rather than waiting for you to pass away. This might be helpful if you were rendered incompetent by a sudden event such as an auto accident.
How can I encrypt my own documents?
We recommend using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). It is an open source package that is free and produces unbreakable encryption. Simply download the package and install it on your computer. You can then right click on any folder or document and select the "create a Self-Decrypting Archive" or SDA option. You will be prompted for a password. Then PGP will create a .exe file with the same name as your original file or folder. You can then upload the .exe file to our website. You would then need to give the password to your heirs. If they forget or lose the password, they will be out of luck, because there will be no possible way to unencrypt the SDA. However, if you feel confidant that your recipients can keep the password safe, using a package like PGP is definitely the safest and most private solution. For our users who feel overly challenged by a package like PGP we offer our own encryption engine. Simply select "use system encryption" when uploading your file. Your file will be encrypted and the original electronically shredded.
Is it possible that my heirs might be charged additional fees?
Yes. iGoodbye.com reserves the right to charge additional fees to your heirs for situations that incur abnormal costs. Examples include if we have to obtain or verify a death certificate outside the USA, or if you want us to locate your heirs, and they turn out to be difficult to locate.