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Even people who think they've ticked off all of the usual boxes on their
estate-planning to-do lists may have overlooked an increasingly important
component of the process: ensuring the proper management and orderly transfer
of their digital assets after they die or become disabled.
Beyond the tangible assets in
your life that you feel should be protected by your estate plan, have you
considered the not-so-tangible assets as well? Your virtual or digital assets
need to be protected too. And unfortunately
there aren't clearly defined legal steps to take for the management of one's
digital estate in the event of incapacity or death.
Since it would seem only logical
(let alone practical) to make legal plans for the management and succession of
our digital estates, what is one to do without a clearly defined body of law on
the subject?
There is a patchwork of laws in
some places, and some services have thought ahead to help those planning their
estates. Nevertheless, the burden inevitably falls on the planners and their
loved ones to really come to terms with those important digital assets, whether
personal (a Facebook account) or downright valuable (a bank account or even a
registered domain name).
The first step in planning your
digital estate is to recognize the need. Thereafter, consider the following
four step process outlined in a recent Morningstar
article aptly titled “Do You Have a Plan for Your Digital
'Estate'?”:
- Do
a fire drill: if you lose your electronic assets, or if someone takes them
away, or if a loved one can never lose them again (and so on and so forth),
then what is lost? What would I want a loved one to have access to? - Take
an inventory: list it out, [securely] document the passwords, and make your
heirs aware of your inventory. - Back
it up: create a backup of any digital assets you can, whether cloud based,
locally stored, or otherwise. - Put
your plan into writing: if it is not written down and available then it is not
a plan at all, but rather a hope, and all the more so with digital assets that
do not have common law precedents to guide your heirs.
For more information and articles on
estate planning and elder law topics, please visit our website
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Reference: Morningstar
(October 3, 2013) “Do You Have a Plan for Your Digital
'Estate'?”