Let's face it: Your e-mail account, Facebook
page and online photo albums are likely to outlive you. Deciding how to manage
your digital legacy just may be your trickiest estate-planning task.
You may be well aware of your
assets, but what about those “digital” ones? What is a “digital asset” anyways?
Think about everything you “own” online and all the accounts you’ve created.
Ringing a bell? Yes, those virtual assets need protection just as much as your
physical assets do.
Proper planning means planning
for all the lives you lead. It used to be that you had your life in the flesh
and then you had your life in paper, that is, your accounts and records and
even contracts. Nowadays, you live much of your life on the internet.
Your online life requires that
information about your digital assets and accounts (especially passwords) must
be included as part of your comprehensive estate plan. In turn, this
information must be kept up-to-date and made available to your executors (also
known as personal representatives), financial agents and trustees.
Likely, the digital age will
only get more complex. Kiplinger
recently addressed this subject of digital assets in a postmortem planning
context in an article titled “Protect Digital Assets After Your Death.”
Everything from simple email
accounts to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and then all the way to investment and
banking sites, each of these contains information that can be of immeasurable
value economically or sentimentally.
For example, what about your
iTunes music collection or Kindle book collection? On the other hand, if your
digital information is not secured postmortem, then it could become a liability
in terms of identity theft.
Bottom line: without a
comprehensive list of accounts and passwords, executors, trustees and even
heirs might have a hard time accessing and/or closing your accounts.
Do not expect any help at common
law either. These are largely uncharted legal waters. In fact, internet
companies themselves are only just starting to address this issue.
For more information and articles on
estate planning and elder law topics, please visit our website
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Reference: Kiplinger
(May 2013) “Protect Digital Assets After Your Death”