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How Do You Store Legal Documents Safely?

How Do You Store Legal Documents Safely?

Managing and Storing Your Legal Documents Securely

Losing something as essential as legal documents can make our worst nightmare come true. We cannot even imagine losing legal papers and the unrest it will create in our lives. It would also be beneficial if you were careful when you choose how to manage and store your legal documents. When selecting your storage medium, you need to consider two aspects: the security of the legal documents and their accessibility. Both these aspects are equally important. Every family should have a family document organizer in place.

Access to your legal documents at any given time during the day or night is equally vital to their security. It is essential to keep a backup of all your legal documents too. If any of these crucial documents get misplaced or lost, replacing them will take time, effort, and money.

There are millions of fraud cases, a significant form of identity fraud, that the Federal Trade Commission reports in the country. So, keeping your legal documents storage secure and organized becomes all the more important to prevent security risks. You cannot just use a container to store important documents but plan to keep them effectively.

What is the Best Way to Organize Legal Documents?

Legal documents need proper management as they contain sensitive information. It would be best if you dedicated time to secure document storage. You might not be using these documents regularly, but you need to store them properly to get them quickly whenever you need them. Not being able to find your necessary legal documents when you need them is stressful. To avoid that stress, we briefly discuss the best way to organize legal documents below.

Declutter

The first step to securing legal document storage is decluttering the papers and documents. It instantly reduces the quantity of paper. You will have to set time for it and shred all the unnecessary paper irrelevant to you now.

Keep the Relevant Paperwork

By decluttering, you can separate your legal documents from other documents and bills. Now you can sit down to properly organize your legal documents into separate files and folders as per requirement.

The Necessary Items Needed

Now that you have all your legal papers in one place, you can use the following items to organize them:

  • File folders
  • Label maker
  • Filing cabinet
  • Binders

Divide Into Categories

The legal documents must be sorted/divided and placed in separate files.

  • Immediate Action: Place the documents and papers that need immediate action. These can include pending bills that have dues left.
  • Essential Documents: Critical documents like your property papers, car papers, income tax papers, and birth and death certificates of family members should be appropriately filed and kept in a filing cabinet. You need these legal document categories maybe just once or twice a year.
  • To Be Near: Keep original documents like your passport, IDs, driving licenses, bank account passbooks, and the like in a handy place. It will be easy to locate them quickly. Keep copies of all such documents.
  • Recycle: Recycle or shred the unimportant paper of the lot. These include outdated bills, credit card offers, and old bank statements.

What is the Safest Way to Store Documents?

There are two ways to store documents, either in the home or digitally. In the house, you can store all your necessary documents in a safe vault. If you are wondering how to keep important documents safe online, you can do it with appropriate digital storage tools.

Where Do You Store Legal Documents?

Use Cloud Storage like Google Documents and Dropbox

If you are wondering where to store your legal documents, you are not the only one. Handle the legal documents with care and store them securely.

There are many ways to do this. Few of them are:

  • The Old-Fashioned Way: You can store your legal documents in an old-fashioned way in bank lockers or safety vaults in your home. In this method, you can keep the original hard copy of the paper. But there is a disadvantage to it. You can lose these vital legal documents in the event of a natural disaster or a fire.
  • E-Lockers: Nowadays, some companies offer e-locker facilities. This service allows you to store soft copies of your essential legal documents easily. You can easily set up a user ID and password to operate the e-locker. The great advantage of using this facility is that you can access the legal documents at any time of the day or night, unlike with banks where you can only during operational hours. Store the records in PDF or JPG format. There will be annual fees to avail of this service with the company you choose.
  • Personal Computer: You can use your personal computer to store your important legal documents. You can scan the originals and store them in folders on your computer. You can make separate folders for each segment of legal documents. There is a disadvantage, though. If the computer crashes, you lose all saved data.
  • Cloud Storage: Presently, many companies use cloud storage. You can use services like Google Documents and Dropbox. You need to register on the site. You will have a user ID and password and log in anytime. As and when you need it, you can scan your document and upload it. The services are free, which is an advantage. To be more secure, save your documents in password-protected PDFs.

How Do You Protect Legal Documents?

It is imperative to protect your legal documents. We mention a few ways of doing so below:

  • Software and Cloud Services: One of the easiest ways to protect your legal documents is to use software and cloud services. These services are cost-effective. You can store password-protected PDFs in them. Also, their security features are well framed.
  • Similar Files in One Folder: If you use a digital filing system to store your documents, you must store them systematically. Keep similar types of documents in one folder. Doing so will make it easier for you to locate them when needed.
  • Encryption: You can easily protect your important and sensitive legal documents by encrypting them. It would help if you made a habit of locking down your file. Password-based encryption is the best way to do so.
  • Backups: Choose a backup solution to keep copies of all your essential legal documents. You can easily store them on your computers, e-lockers, or document management services. Please make sure they are password protected.

my-legacy.ai’s digital vault is an apt solution to store your digital belongings. They are pioneers in this field. The user can easily and securely store their digital valuables at my-legacy.ai.

How to Keep Important Documents Safe at Home?

You can keep your important documents safe at home, either physically or digitally. Physically, you can keep them in a secure vault. These vaults have a key or number combination to keep them locked. The ones available in the market nowadays are mostly fire-proof and water-proof. There is easy access to all the documents if you own a safe vault at home. You can share the key or the number combination with a trusted person to use the secure vault in case of your death or incapacitation. Remember to protect your vital documents from accidental spills or wear and tear by placing them in plastic page slips and keeping them in a binder. Place this binder in the safe vault.

You can use the services of a digital vault for your digital assets. my-legacy.ai offers such services. According to statistics, the average person has over $50,000 in digital assets. Hence, creating a separate vault for your digital belongings becomes necessary. These belongings can include hundreds of videos, photographs, and valuable documents like bank and property papers. The photographs and videos hold sentimental value; hence, people like to keep them in a safe place at home. A digital vault from my-legacy.ai helps you to keep your digital assets safe. Doing so, you also help to maintain and store them properly. You can easily track them when needed consequently.

Conclusion

Whether you store your essential legal documents physically or digitally, choose the most suitable and convenient method. Though keeping them in your home keeps documents secure, fire or theft is always possible. With everything turning to digital means, storing legal documents in a digital format is becoming more common.

my-legacy.ai provides you with these services in the form of my-legacy.ai Digital Vault. It is a means of secure online storage for legal documents. Use the services offered by my-legacy.ai to store your legal documents safely online. Not only will you have all your digital assets consolidated in one place, but you can also track them quickly at a moment’s notice. You can store your digital assets at my-legacy.ai.

Along with these services, you can create your social media will on my-legacy.ai. According to the latest stats, an average individual has over 100 social media accounts. In the event of your death or incapacitation, my-legacy.ai will hand over your account details to the one you have nominated.

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