What do you do when your loved ones are no longer with you, and you suddenly find that there is no paper trail or documents to show the location of financial assets?
This issue came to our attention when one of our IT partners referred us to a law firm specializing in Trust and Probate. According to this firm it is not uncommon to find that when a family member who was handling financial concerns passes away, they have not left a paper trail and documentation to show where the money is kept, details of account numbers, which banks the accounts are at, etc. With more and more people using online banking capabilities, the situation often gets more complicated due to lack of a paper trail.
This particular law firm was interested in retaining our services for forensic recovery of data from a computer, laptop and other electronic devices that may contain the information needed for the family and the court in order to settle the probate. Our forensic data recovery not only allows for data recovery from damaged media, but also allows us to provide readable and accessible files that attorneys can review to locate the necessary data. All files contain an MD5 Hash, which is required by the court to prove that no data was altered in the process, and we also follow “chain of custody” rules to ensure the integrity of the data. In such legal cases there is a good chance that one or more family members may file legal action to dispute the findings. In those cases, we can be retained as an expert witness to testify regarding the data recovery process.
This is a very unique service we offer to attorneys for fast resolution of cases, and to allow family members access to the funds as quickly as possible.
In another instance, we were approached by an IT partner, who had a client bring in a very old computer that a member of their family was using before he passed away. We were able to recover all the data from the 20-year-old drive, which will help the family to resolve their financial matters quickly and efficiently.
We always recommend our clients back up their data, and in cases such as these, we recommend that they share with a financial advisor, attorney, or family member the location of their financial data and how to access the files.
If you are interested in additional information regarding our data recovery services, please visit
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