Senior Artists—Next of Kin Procedure RE: Art Business
I'm starting a new post copying my reply to the one Janet posted in the technology thread. Janet, This issue is something a lot of us seniors are dealing with. Lynda mentioned a will, and there is also a living trust, should you prefer- paperwork you can get online and file with a legal person. I also bought a NOK Box (Next of Kin) that has all the folders, paperwork and lists of documents you need. Also, there are all the medical forms...just ask your doctor. My doctor brought it up when I turned 65. As far at ASF goes, I have been wondering about that...how to leave my NOK the info to get into my ASF account and let them know. I was struggling with temporary blindness for awhile and thought to stop my account too, but phone calls to the one person I had in my phone (the original salesperson) didn't get any traction, and luckily my vision came back after time, and I was able to continue, but I was really in a quandry for awhile. But I too wonder about how to get all of the ASF and attached parts notified...Stripe, Mailchimp, Fulfillment, etc. Does ASF have a procedure for this (a step-by-step guide-book AND a telephone number to call to get this procedure rolling in the event of an artist passing?...either reassigning the website to the NOK and changing banking info and a different billing program for a NOK or a senior unable to continue and wanting to just keep the website and income flow without the training, etc....something easy for a NOK to take care of. .....a question for the ASF team I think.
A difficult topic for sure but also; we make plans in life (Wills, trust, power of attorney, advanced health care directives) to give ourselves piece of mind and to lower the burden on our families.
Zero reason we should not have something in place for the art businesses as well.
Gonna talk through this internally.
Side Note: Its also a huge topic generally in the age of social media these days... who ones the accounts, how do you store the passwords, how do you shut them down if you can't log in... etc, etc.
We could likely put into place a super comprehensive one I think to cover all of this and equally importantly.. as well as set into place yearly check-ins to make sure everything stays up to date and is accurate, reflects the artists wishes etc.