MyLivingWill™

The MyLivingWill™ service steps you through a simple question and answer wizard, formats your answers into a readable format, allows you to store your information securely online and allows you to make unlimited updates.  You can then designate your own personal "Keyholders®", who with their unique ID can unlock your Advance Directives at the appropriate time.

The complete pricing structure is available on our Products & Prices page.

According to current laws in most jurisdictions, in order to be legal documents your Advance Directives must be signed in the presence of two witnesses. However, "electronic signature" laws are moving rapidly and we are closely monitoring these laws to support the future electronic notarization of documents, or even the electronic signature of your Advance Directives.  It is only a matter of time before this becomes standard practice in preparing legal documents.  According to today's laws you will need to print the Advance Directives you create with the MyLivingWill™ service and have them signed according to the laws in your area.  More details about this process are available on the help pages within the wizard. 

Although the unsigned versions of your Advance Directives stored online at ExpatLegalWills.com are not legal documents, if you wish you can allow one or more of your designated Keyholders® to have access to the documents that you have created here at ExpatLegalWills.com.  This could be important if your legally signed copies cannot be located.  In this situation, your ExpatLegalWills.com documents can still provide some guidance to a loving family, as they can understand your wishes regarding your health care if you are unable to communicate these wishes yourself.

If properly signed according to the laws in your area, your Advance Directives are legal documents that cannot be over-ridden by your family.

Unlike a Will, a Living Will comes into effect before you die.  In particular, a Living Will comes into effect if you are mentally incapacitated (e.g. in a coma) or your death has become inevitable, and you are unable to express your wishes yourself.

It expresses any wishes you have for a right to die with dignity, or if you have some views on the health care that you wish to receive.

If you live in Québec, the MyLivingWill™ service creates a document called a "Protection Mandate". This Protection Mandate grants powers to handle issues such as your financial, real estate and business affairs as well as your healthcare wishes.

You can choose to have a 1-year, 10-year, 25-year or Life membership at ExpatLegalWills.com, during which time you can make as many updates or amendments to your Advance Directives as you wish at no extra charge.  Details of the membership packages available can be found on our Products & Prices page.

Stepping through the question and answer wizard for the MyLivingWill™ service could take less than ten minutes, particularly if you are already comfortable with the decisions that you wish to make.  However, some questions may require some thought, and there are some issues that you may need to discuss with your family and loved ones. 

When working through the MyLivingWill™ service you do not have to complete the document in one sitting.  You can answer a couple of questions and then store these wishes securely online here at ExpatLegalWills.com until you have a few more minutes to answer additional questions.  If you wish, you can spend many weeks or months making unlimited updates until you are happy with your final results, at which point you could have your final copy reviewed and signed.

All of your information stored at ExpatLegalWills.com is safe and secure.  Your information is so highly encrypted that nobody has access to this information other than yourself and your trusted Keyholders using their randomly generated personal key.  Even the owners and administrators of ExpatLegalWills.com are not able to access your information due to the software design and encryption methods used.

Note, however, that some services require temporary decryption of a member's documents as part of the operation of providing that service.  For example, if the member wants to have their Will reviewed by one of our legal professionals, or wants to have their documents printed and mailed to them, then the software will automatically decrypt these documents as part of the member's instructions to have these services performed.

All data passing from your computer to ExpatLegalWills.com is authenticated and encrypted using 256-bit "SSL encryption".  This is the most advanced level of encryption available today, and it means that any information sent from your computer is scrambled in a way which makes it completely unintelligible if intercepted.  When you are on a secure section within the web site, a padlock will appear on your web browser.  This is your assurance that the encryption is in place and that you are communicating across a secure link.

Furthermore, ExpatLegalWills.com uses an industry standard high security streaming-encryption algorithm known as "RSA" to encrypt all of your information before it is stored online.  To give you a feeling for the level of security provided by this encryption, it has been estimated that with the most efficient algorithms known to date, it would take a computer operating at 1 million instructions per second over 300 quintillion years (that's 3 with 20 zeros behind it!) to break the encryption. That's several trillion times longer than the age of the Earth.

All of our data is securely stored in a highly encrypted format on database servers. To protect against catastrophic data loss, daily backups are performed on each of our servers. Hence, if any one of our servers experienced technical difficulties, the data would not be at risk.

Furthermore, physical protection of our primary systems includes:

• Fire detection and fire suppression systems with dry pipe pre-action sprinkler systems
• N + 1 redundant power supplies, providing dual power feeds and backup batteries, water coolant systems and generators
• N + 1 redundant climate control, providing primary and backup chiller units, cooling towers, and water storage
• Local network operations center (NOC) for monitoring all data center operations
• 24x7 monitoring and support of network connection and server availability
• 24x7 uniformed guard service with interior and exterior closed-circuit television surveillance
• Electronic access at all data center entrances, including biometric hand scanners
• Electronic key management systems and individually keyed cabinets

As you can see, we take the security and privacy of all of our member information very seriously.

Services such as MyFuneral™, MyLifeLocker™, MyVault™, and MyMessages™ do not create legal documents and make no assumptions about your country of residence. 

In the US, Canada, England and Wales, we have worked extensively to ensure that the legal documents created by the MyWill™, MyExpatWill™ and MyLivingWill™ services are up to date with the laws in all of the states in the United States and the provinces in Canada, including: Alabama, Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, Arkansas, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Manitoba, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward Island, Québec, Rhode Island, Saskatchewan, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Yukon.  Hence, these services can be used to generate legal documents in any state in the United States with the exception of Louisiana, and any Canadian Province or Territory, and any Canadian Province or Territory with the exception of Québec, and in England and Wales in the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, the MyPowerOfAttorney™ service is available for all States in the United States except Louisiana, and for all Provinces and Territories in Canada. In the UK, power of attorney forms are provided free of charge by the government.

Note that even in unsupported areas, there is value in stepping through the wizards provided in these services in preparation for a consultation with an attorney.  It is strongly recommended that residents outside of the above supported states/provinces/countries seek legal advice even after completing the wizards. Local laws in these unsupported areas have not been considered in the structure of the legal documents.

If you have any doubts about the legal standing of any documents in your jurisdiction, feel free to seek legal counsel in your area to have your documents reviewed.

There is a considerable amount of information included in the on-line help of the MyLivingWill™ wizard.  This will answer most of the common questions regarding the steps included in creating your own Advance Directives. 

For information about the other services available, or about ExpatLegalWills.com in general, you can browse this website or send an email to [email protected].  We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.