I Need to Estate Plan My Gmail Account

I'm going to date myself, but I still vividly remember signing up for my first "electronic" mail account in the early 90's when I was a freshman in college. I guess it was memorable because it required traveling down into a dark basement underneath one of the buildings. I picked a really strange address name at the time instead of my name, but I have learned to keep my email identity simple since. Email has been joined by a myriad of other internet services. Everyday someone can upload videos onto the net, pay bills online, connect with others via social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn or just provide your thoughts for the world to see via a blog. Fast forward almost 20 years; the internet has become fully integrated in our lives.

Integration has given birth to a person's "virtual life." With a virtual life comes the need for virtual planning just like a real life needs an estate plan; be it a voluntary one or intestate. Many fail to see how their email account would even be part of their estate. But not taking the appropriate steps in your life - be it virtual or not - can create issues down the road. For example, a few years ago, Justin Ellsworth, a U.S. Marine, was killed in Iraq and his family requested access to his Yahoo email account to retrieve pictures, emails, etc. residing in Justin's account. Yahoo, citing its privacy policy, did not relinquish access to Ellsworth's family. Eventually, Ellsworth's parents successfully sued forcing Yahoo to turn Justin's emails over though only in hard copy format. While this had a positive ending, it cost the Ellsworth's untold hardship along with a great deal of money in legal fees to gain access to something that normally is only clicks away on a keyboard.

To appropriately plan your virtual life, it is important to understand internet providers' privacy policies. Here is a quick rundown of the major providers:

Google: Google mail requires a copy of a death certificate, copy of a power of attorney or birth certificate and a copy of an email sent from the account you are trying to close. A Google account will stay open forever barring a request to delete it.
Yahoo: Has not changed their policy since the Ellsworth case and there is no right of survivorship and non-transferability. Upon receipt of a death certificate, Yahoo will terminate the account and delete all of the contents. Yahoo accounts only have a ninety (90) day window before deleting an account based on inactivity.
Hotmail: Falls in between Yahoo and Google. They will grant access to the account after being provided similar information as Google but will eventually delete the account after a year of inactivity.
MySpace: Will not grant access to anyone to edit or delete any of the content or change the settings but you can request an account to be removed if deemed appropriate.
Facebook: The account is turned "off" and made into a memorial for the person upon request. Facebook grants no ability to edit, limits access to the site but will remove the "person" based on request from next of kin after being provided similar information as Google.
Twitter: Has what appears to be no official policy but states they cannot disclose account information or passwords to anyone, even post-death. Twitter will remove an account after given notice with a death certificate and may remove an account based on 6 months of inactivity.

A simple glance reveals that each provider has a slightly different privacy policy with respect to their willingness to open up a user's account to a non-user. This can mean a number of hurdles someone will need to jump through to access the account because, if you are like me, you have a couple of virtual accounts with several providers, meaning there is no uniform approach.

Well, there has to be a solution. You could simply have a slip of paper listing all your information and store it in your house somewhere readily available. Though, the lack of security sounds like the start of a bad movie.

One practical solution is to keep a list of passwords and similar information on a flash drive or stored on your computer somewhere but name the file something unique - i.e., not "passwords" - and informing a person you trust about the file. Or you could put the flash drive in a safety deposit box making sure someone knows where it is. However, many providers require periodic updating of your password, which means a trip to the bank every time you update a password. Another possibility is to create a power of attorney. That might grant access to some email accounts but would not be a complete solution to trump every provider's policy.

Where there is a demand for services, new companies will appear to meet those demands including several commercial providers to address this very issue. One commercial service, Legacy Locker, acts like a safe deposit box for your log-ins, account information, etc. Legacy Locker also provides personalized instructions to survivors as to how you want your online identity handled. As this market develops, I would guess more commercial services will open. As I have never used any of these services, I cannot vouch for them personally, but they are options to consider.

With estate planning, most people think about creating a will or trust or protecting their home and do not think about their virtual life. As our lives have become intertwined with technology, the need to plan an "electronic" estate has grown such that ignoring your virtual life can trigger estate issues down the road.

Christopher Guest invites you to learn about atypical estate planning or would like more information on wills and trusts, please click on his newsletter http://www.guestlawllc.com/newsletter.html. If you would like to contact Mr. Guest or interested in more information about him please click http://www.guestlawllc.com.

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Making Money With Pending Tax Deed Sales in Real Estate Investing

Tax certificates are pre-tax deed sales. Every year municipalities sell these financial instruments to have cash flow to run the local government. Delinquent property taxpayers can later pay off the tax liens, wait to pay them if they sell their home or do nothing and eventually have a tax deed sold and lose their property.

Tax certificates are bid on an interest rate basis with the first bid being the highest interest rate starting first. For example, assume the maximum allowable rate for a tax certificate is 18%. The first bid would be for 18% and the next, and higher offer, would be 17%, then 16% and so on. The lowest interest rate bid is more favorable to the property owner who eventually has to pay the taxes due plus the interest rate that was finally accepted as the "high" bid.

I reviewed a series of final auction rates recently and noticed that the average closed sale rate was 9.75%, not bad when Certificate of Deposit rates are 2%. Tax certificates should not be judged as to safety against CDs as they can be risky and the perspective purchaser should read the disclosures and risks that the municipalities provide in written format. After a certain number of years of tax certificates being issued, a buyer of the next tax certificate can request a tax deed be issued. The tax deed and the open tax certificates are put up for auction as one item and the public gets to bid a dollar amount, instead of an interest rate, for the payoff and ownership of the property. This is the last chance the property owner has to save his property by paying all the past due certificates.

The only reason investors would buy tax deeds is because the property has equity in it, even if it has to be repaired or the structure demolished to create this equity. The original property owner has lost this equity as a result of the sale but he doesn't have to. This is where very savvy investors have made tons of money by contacting the property owners and purchasing the property before the tax deed sales.

The enormous benefit that an investor gets is that he is not in competition with other investors in an open bidding format. He can analyze the property, which he has to do anyway to bid on the tax deed, but he can make an offer to the property owner directly and give the owner some money, small as it might be, it is better than nothing at the tax deed sale. Combine this aspect of a motivated seller with an investor using creative financing techniques to buy the property and you have a perfect storm of getting distressed properties before they are lost to a tax deed sale. Since very few investors realize the power of this prospecting technique, the field is wide open, and combined with using subject to, owner financing, options and land trust transfers, the investor can turn these purchases into virtually little or no money deals instead of coming up with the full amount of the tax certificates owed.

In summary, this pre-sale purchase of the property by an investor is a win-win situation for all the parties involved - the property owner get some equity out, the investor makes money, the municipality gets their property transfer taxes paid (they already got the property taxes at the original certificate sale) and, presumably, the end-buyer gets a good deal on his purchase.

Dave Dinkel has over 35 years experience in real estate investing which has given him a unique perspective into the real estate market. Dave is the author of the best-selling e-courses http://www.fsbopowersellingsystem.com/ and many other e-courses for investors and homeowners. Dave's focus in the past few years is educating the public in a manner that doesn't amount to paying for a master's degree. His recent contribution to this end is the e-course "48 Ways to Create a Massive Buyers List" which can be seen at http://www.MakingaBuyersList.com.

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