The short version
- Many survivors find the paperwork required after a death to be burdensome.
- Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) and Digitization Minister Karianne Tung (Ap) present a digital solution called “digital estate”, which should lighten the burden and save time.
- NOK 5.5 million has been set aside in the revised national budget for the project.
- The new solution will include information from several government agencies and will save NOK 600 million over five years.
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– The systems and agencies apparently do not talk to each other at all. You feel that you have to enter the same information time and time again.
This is what manager Åse Skrøvset says in Virke gravferd.
It was last February that she suddenly lost her lover of 30 years.
Died on holiday
Dag Amundsen (59) suffered heart failure when he was on a skiing holiday in Austria.
– One thing after another appears. You are put out.
– I only thought I started to get my head above water when the summer was approaching. But then there is a backlog – the tax notice arrives, for example – you won’t be completely done with the practicalities until a year later, she says.
Properties, vehicles, insurance, creditors, accounts, subscriptions – who do we actually have a power agreement with?
For Skrøvset, the solution to getting an overview was to regularly set aside time in the calendar where she worked on the case.
Les at Your Money: Estate: This is how you sort out your finances
Virke gravferd is the industry organization for funeral agencies in Norway. They are often the first to be contacted when someone dies. According to Skrøvset, they report that many of the survivors are overwhelmed by all the practical tasks
Promises to ease the burden
The goal is that from the autumn this will be much easier for everyone who loses a loved one.
This is what Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) and Digitalization Minister Karianne Tung (Ap) say.
VG meets them together with Skrøvset at Hovedorganisationen Virke’s office at Solli plass in Oslo.
– We will establish a digital solution where all information about vehicles, properties, debts and accounts will be collected. We don’t have that now. It will be a digital solution at Altinn, which we have a relationship with and know well today, says Tung.
It will also be possible to find a prenuptial agreement, will or other things that are registered.
They call it a “digital estate”. The regulation that lays the legal basis will be sent out for consultation on Monday this week.
– You have to get out of an extremely demanding situation of dealing with a lot of extra work in addition. This saves time, energy, frustration and the health of the people who are affected by this, she says.
– NOK 5.5 million has been set aside in the revised national budget for the project, says the finance minister.
Putting such a solution in place has been demanding – you have to safeguard the deceased’s right to privacy – while ensuring the next of kin’s need to have an overview.
– You will be allowed to do things in your life that your descendants will not be able to see, says Vedum.
But emphasizes:
– There are some phases in life where you are extra vulnerable. If you lose someone suddenly, it is very dramatic. You feel very helpless, says Trygve Slagsvold Vedum.
– Then the hope is that this will make it more clear and safe, he says.
Saves 600 million
They compare the new solution with a digital tax return.
– Before, you filled in and had to collect various annual statements and all sorts of things. Now everything is automated in the tax return and it appears by itself. The same will happen in digital estates, says Tung.
The new solution includes, among other things, information from the Directorate of Digitalisation, the Brannøysund Register, the courts, the financial industry, the tax authority, the Norwegian Mapping Authority, the Norwegian Road Administration and the Norwegian Directorate of Agriculture.
– It is digitization at its best when you manage to get so many government agencies to come together to find possible solutions, says APS’s new digitization minister.
The government expects that the new solution, which makes it easier for people, will save NOK 600 million over the course of five years.
