Steve:

Thank you for your reply.

Nice reminder that if a person takes on a new position one of the first things to do is

1) identify which databases are protected by TDE

2) verify there are backups of the certificates in a known & reachable location

3) secure the password

in lieu of 2 & 3 existing, create the certificate backups personally with my own password

[and if the master key is not accessible to allow a certificate backup to be created .....

better report it to management ahead of time that the data will be lost if disaster occurs]