According to current laws in most jurisdictions, in order to be a legal
document your Power of Attorney must be signed in the presence of two witnesses,
and in most cases in front of a Notary Public. A Notary Public has the
legal standing to administer oaths and officiate over the signing process.
In other words, they are an independent person who will determine that all
parties signed of their own free will, and that they are all who they say they
are.
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 Power of Attorney.
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
Power of Attorney you create with the MyPowerOfAttorney™service and have it
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 version of your Power of Attorney stored online
is not a legal document, if you wish you can allow one or more
of your designated Keyholders®to have access to the Power of Attorney that you
have created here. This could be important if your
legally signed copy cannot be located. In this situation, your
PartingWishes.com
Power of Attorney can still provide some guidance to a loving
family, as they can understand how you would want your legal, financial and/or
business matters to be handled.
The question and answer wizard can be completed in less than 15 minutes,
although this is not advisable, particularly if you are unfamiliar with the laws
and processes involved. The wizard has a wealth of helpful information
that you will likely find educational and useful. You should take the time
to read through as much of this as possible, so that the Power of Attorney is
not simply created, but you understand exactly what it means. There may
even be sections of the wizard that you feel warrant some additional research.
When working through the MyPowerOfAttorney™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
PartingWishes.com
until you have a few more minutes to answer additional
questions. If you prefer, 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
PartingWishes.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
PartingWishes.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
PartingWishes.com
is authenticated and
encrypted using 128-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
PartingWishes.com
site, a padlock will appear at the bottom of your web browser's screen.
This is your assurance that the encryption is in place and that you are
communicating across a secure link.
Furthermore, we use 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.
Most of our services here at
PartingWishes.com
are completely international.
They can be used by anyone in any country in the world.
Services such as MyFuneral™,
MyMessages™, MyLife™
and MyMemorials™ 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, 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, Rhode Island, Saskatchewan, South Carolina,
South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington
D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Yukon Territory. 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 with the
exception of Quebec, 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 in Canada except Quebec. 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.