Sooner or later, you may have sensitive papers or other portable assets of great value that must be kept in a safe location—such as an offshore safety deposit facility.

What kind of things are we talking about? Any valuable papers. Things like automobiles/titles, coins (rare), passports, bearer shares, citizenship records, bills of sale, pension records, school transcripts, trust documents, immigration documents, rare stamps, mortgage documents, etc. You may want to store data securely off-site, such as on a USB memory stick or backup DVD.

A safety deposit box is also recommended by many experts for estate planning purposes. In order to pass the contents of a safe deposit box to your heirs without any formalities, it is essential that another person has access and a key. This is accomplished by having the inheritor be the signer on the box. If you do not wish to have access to them during your lifetime, you keep the keys and arrange for them to be delivered in a sealed envelope with instructions upon your death or incapacitation.

Should You Use a Bank or an Independent Safe Deposit Box Company?

Usually the best solution is to rent a safety deposit box at a trusted major, first class bank – not just a box company. Many banks will require that you also have an account with them and that withdrawals are authorized in advance to pay for the box rent.

Why Should You Use a Bank Instead of an Independent Safe Deposit Company? Because independent companies seem to fold or get busted with great regularity. Like public storage facilities, they are also often used by less desirable characters.

On the other hand, a private storage organization may not require any identification to open the box. They can accept any nickname you give them. Access can be granted on a plastic card basis without requiring customers to sign in. Since Box is not linked to any account or payment facility, it obliges the user to pay several years in advance. This will protect the box from being opened and the contents sold if rent is not paid.

A client told me the sad story of how, after a long hospital stay due to cancer, he found that his box in a public self-storage unit had been opened a year later for non-payment of rent. The contents were sold at auction. He had a collection of old stock certificates that were worthless as stocks, but were of great value to collectors. On one was the rare original signature of inventor Thomas Edison. They were disposed of as scrap paper.

Best Countries for Offshore Safe Deposit Boxes

Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg are traditional safe havens suitable for safe deposit boxes. A good country for a box is one where there is no requirement to show a passport or go through formal border control. Not so with Switzerland – unless you take your chance at one of the very few unmanned border crossings!

Vienna and Zurich airports are also convenient national airline hubs. You can easily pass through these countries while traveling between other cities. Just arrange to stay long enough to get to your stash; Insert or remove what you want. You don’t need to look for a tax haven for a safe deposit box location. Any peaceful, stable country where property rights are respected is fine.

Almost all banks provide safety deposit boxes. If yours is located in a country where you don’t have any problems, it doesn’t matter which one you use. But you should have at least one person you trust who knows about the box and is able to access it. It is important that your box is not forgotten or abandoned if you do have an accident.

Keep the key safe!

When you’ve opened the box, consider submitting the key in a sealed envelope to the bank’s safekeeping office or your personal personal banker. By doing this you ensure that the key will not be discovered on your person or among your possessions by someone with questionable intentions, such as your soon-to-be ex-wife.

Many bank safety deposit boxes have two keys – one is with you. The other (a common pass key) is kept by the bank. The box can be opened from both.

The latest hi-tech safe deposit box has no keys. These safe-deposit boxes can only be opened with a fingerprint scan. Another solution is to use boxes where they have combination locks. Experienced safe-crackers are good at opening combo-locks. In our experience – they are less secure than complex keys. We’re also not interested in secretly memorized numbers. Why? Because we have forgotten a key combination or password more than once.

Make sure you can access the box without showing ID, in case you lose it and need to retrieve your backup copies that you’ve thoughtfully secured inside the box! Some banks, especially in Zurich, will want to see and photocopy ID every time you use your box – even if you are well known. Wherever your box is, make sure you are introduced to several employees who can help you access your box without ID if needed. Ask them to watch you well and remember you personally so you can always access the money in your box or account without any identification. Tell them your favorite silly joke or story and ask them to remember it so you can tell it again years later. Then they’ll remember you!

Shh… can you keep a secret?

Don’t just take a key to a safe deposit box and wear it on a gold chain around your neck at all times. This is something that the villains of the film do.

If you want something secret, always think ahead. Don’t tell anyone about it. Leave the keys and instructions with your personal banker or someone you trust completely. Think ahead too! Leave death instructions in your box – in case anything happens to you. These may be recorded, or may be on CD as a video. Your box will be opened after about a year or two of inactivity – if and when the annual fee is not paid.

Sometimes a safe deposit box is forgotten for decades. Nearly seventy years after criminal mastermind and iconic billionaire Al Capone died in prison, a long-forgotten, secret locked underground vault of a closed bank he once owned in Chicago named after him was found. His money was never received. A national television network bought the rights to televise the drilling and reopening of the vault ‘live’. Many people, including me, were ready for the grand opening. We thought it would be an event to rival the discovery of the magnificent tomb of King Tut in Egypt. What happened? It was a good show with a bit of a let-down towards the end. Apparently, someone with a spare key to Al Capone’s safe deposit facility got there first. There was no interest in the safe at all.

Will your secret die with you?

Most offshore banks will require that you have a bank account with them and be authorized to withdraw your annual safety deposit box rent payment from that account. Such instructions and automatic payments can last you many years before you are declared dead and your box is drilled. Thus your banker should probably be instructed to open your instructions (not your box) if there is no contact from you for a certain period, say three years. Better yet, your banker should be instructed “After 3 years of no contact, please contact my lawyer, XYZ, or your children, wife, best friend.” Someone you trust should have instructions as to what is to be done with your property in the event of your death, loss or incapacitation. Your banker should be told what to do or how and when to contact persons who will know for sure where you are.

Perhaps someone you trust who has nothing to gain from suing you should be given a sealed power of attorney or an assignment and a valid will to tie up all loose ends. Without it, in Switzerland, for example, the bank just keeps your assets! simple as that. English-speaking countries generally have eschatiate legislation covering dormant accounts and abandoned safe deposit box contents. In England, unclaimed money and property go to ‘The Crown’. In California, the contents of boxes and accounts that have been inactive for more than seven years go to the teachers’ pension fund.

In such cases, the heirs have a very limited time to make a claim. Most never do because they never learn about the property.

Your Anonymous Vault in the Austrian Palace

The Swiss and Austrians generally excel in running prudential safe deposit facilities. In almost all countries, ID is required to rent a safe box. But in Austria, at the time of writing, there is a safe deposit company that offers anonymous safes. It’s been around for years and was highly recommended by a reader. It’s also a good place to store second passports, bank cards and other PT paraphernalia that you don’t want to carry in your home country.

The company’s facilities are located in the basement of a beautiful Viennese palace. Its name is Das Safe and its website is http://www.dassafe.com If you’re in Vienna, you can meet them at Auerspergstrasse 1. We predict that they will remain in business for a long time to come, but how long they will be allowed to do business anonymously is open to question.

Other recommended safe deposit facilities in Austria are at Schollerbank branches (where no key is required – access is controlled by electronic fingerprint scan) and at Raiffeisenbank in the ‘secret’ enclave of Jungholz.

A reliable safe deposit company in Prague

Another service we know about is Prague Safe Deposit in the Czech Republic. They require valid ID to open the box. Since then the service has been highly professional and discreet with no ID required for later access. You can pay in advance for up to five years. Entrance to the main vault is self-service with a swipe card system at the main door. You can give the door card and key to anyone. They can then access your vault without the need to meet any staff or reveal their identity in any way.

This special venture is a joint venture between one of the Czech banks and the Checkpoint chain of money changers. It’s been around since 1992. They are located in the basement of an old bank building just off the famous Wenceslas Square. They welcome visitors and inspect the facilities. The street address is 28 Izna 13. The website is currently not available in English but if you go there you will find that they speak English.