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WHEN NOT EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR NAME

May 09, 2007

Joel Schoenmeyer at Death and Taxes blog ponders the benefits of having an unusual name, like, say, Joel Schoenmeyer. It makes you easy to Google, or to find if you are named in an estate planning document:

How does this relate to estate planning and probate? Well, it's important that the people named in your documents can be located if something happens to you. (It's especially important in the case of powers of attorney, which may be needed at a moment's notice.) If you are in a coma, and have named John Smith of Chicago, Illinois as your agent, with no further descriptive information, then you've got a problem.

His solution?

I typically ask for names and contact information for all family members, as well as for all non-family members named in a client's documents. And, in most cases, if there's confusion about someone's identity, I try to provide more information in the documents themselves.

He notes a Wall Street Journal article yesterday about the difficulties people with common names have when they want to be Googled - a problem that Joel and I don't have.

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