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Sky Unlimited Legal Advisory offers you the perfect combination of trusted advisor, problem solver, keeper of secrets and deep listener.
Our team is specifically trained to help you keep more money in your business and personal accounts, watch out for pitfalls, handle sticky situations (ideally before they even get sticky) and effectively tend to the parts of your business that are especially challenging.
At the same time, we work as your trusted advisor who helps you make the very best personal, financial, legal, and business decisions for your family throughout your lifetime.
You always said you wanted someone who could do all “that” stuff - the tasks that you’d rather not handle.
That's precisely where we step in - protecting your business and your family!
Notes from Our Chief Counsel's Desk
Don’t Forget to Include Your Digital Assets In Your Estate Plan—Part 2
Today, estate planning encompasses not just tangible property like finances and real estate, but also digital assets like cryptocurrency, blogs, and social media.
In the first part of this series, we discussed the importance of including your digital assets in your estate plan. Here, we’ll talk about the best ways to get started with this process.
With so much of our lives now lived online, it’s vital you put the proper estate planning provisions in place to ensure your digital assets are effectively protected and passed on in the event of your incapacity or death.
However, because many types of online assets have only been in existence for a handful of years, there are very few laws governing how they should be dealt with through estate planning. And due to their virtual and often anonymous nature, just locating and accessing some of these assets can be extremely difficult for those you leave behind.
Given these unique challenges, last week we discussed some of the most common types of digital assets and the legal landscape surrounding them. Here, we offer some practical tips to ensure all of your digital property is effectively incorporated into your estate plan.
Don’t Forget to Include Your Digital Assets In Your Estate Plan—Part 1
If you’ve created an estate plan, it likely includes traditional wealth and assets like finances, real estate, personal property, and family heirlooms.
But unless your plan also includes your digital assets, there’s a good chance this online property will be lost forever following your death or incapacity.
What’s more, even if these assets are included in your plan, unless your executor and/or trustee knows the accounts exist and how to access them, you risk burdening your family and friends with the often lengthy and expensive process of locating and accessing them. And depending on the terms of service governing your online accounts, your heirs may not be able to inherit some types of digital assets at all.
With our lives increasingly being lived online, our digital assets can be quite extensive and extremely valuable. Given this, it’s more important than ever that your estate plan includes detailed provisions to protect and pass on such property in the event of your incapacity or death.
Asset Protection Trusts for Business Owners: How They Work
The lawsuit came from a contract dispute with a former vendor. By the time it was resolved, the business owner had spent fourteen months in litigation, paid six figures in legal fees, and watched a judgment place a lien on real estate he had spent two decades building.
He had insurance. It did not cover this kind of claim. He had a lawyer. The lawyer was excellent at litigation. Neither the insurance nor the litigation did anything about the assets that were now exposed during the two years the case was active.
What he did not have was a structure designed to protect what he had built before the dispute arrived.
That is the problem a lifetime asset protection trust is designed to solve.
WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYTHING YOU HAVE BUILT WHILE YOU ARE STILL ALIVE
Most of the trust planning conversations in estate planning have focused on what happens at death: how assets transfer, how to minimize estate tax exposure, how to keep a business in the family across generations. Those are real and important questions.
But business owners face a different category of risk that traditional estate planning does not address. The risk is not death. It is what happens to everything you have built while you are still alive: a lawsuit, a creditor claim, a business dispute, or a personal liability that could attach to business assets or vice versa.
Digital Estate Planning: Why Passwords Aren't Enough
She found the notebook in the top drawer of her mother's desk. Six pages. Every account. Every password. Username, password, recovery question. Her mother had been organized her whole life, and the notebook proved it.
Then she tried to log in.
The bank account asked for a six-digit code sent to her mother's phone. The phone was locked with a fingerprint. The email linked to her financial accounts had been set up decades ago through a provider that had since shut down. The recovery phone number on that account was a landline, disconnected years ago.
The notebook was thorough. It did not help.
This is the digital estate planning gap most families do not see until it is already too late.
This is one of the most common oversights families face today, and it almost never appears in anyone's plan.
WHY THE PASSWORD IS NO LONGER ENOUGH
Most online accounts now require two steps to log in. The first step is the password. The second step is a verification code sent to a trusted device or phone number at the moment someone tries to access the account.
Why Updating Your Estate Plan Matters More Than You Think
You probably don't think about your estate plan very often. That's actually a good sign. It usually means life is moving forward the way you hoped it would.
A new grandchild arrives. Your children become adults. You buy a new home, start a business, retire, remarry, or simply build more than you had a few years ago. None of those milestones feels like a reason to revisit your estate plan. Yet together, they quietly create a version of your life that your old plan may no longer recognize.
That is where problems begin.
One of the biggest misconceptions we see is the belief that once estate planning is "done," it stays done. In reality, an estate plan is only as effective as it is current. A plan that reflected your wishes five years ago may no longer protect the people you love today.
THE GREATEST RISK ISN'T HAVING AN OLD ESTATE PLAN
People often assume the biggest estate planning mistake is not having a will or trust.
In many cases, the greater risk is believing an outdated plan will still work exactly the way you intended.