Digital Estate Planning

In a recent Time article, author Katy Steinmetz profiled the complexity and difficulty that presently exists in managing a person's digital assets upon their death. These assets would include things like Kindle books, an iTunes music library, Facebook/Twitter /LinkedIn accounts, email accounts, and really any other type of asset for which there is a digital account assigned to the person. I began thinking about this and realized we have never specifically planned for an estate administration involving digital assets since I have been at JMW, but we really need to start doing that. Our forms now allow you to instruct your heirs about where your assets are held, and then give them access to those assets. Beyond these specific provisions in a will, this planning is relatively straightforward. First, you will need a list of all those assets along with the appropriate passwords for your personal representative (executor) to allow them to manage the asset after your death. Another trick is to pass the device that holds the content (the Kindle device, or computer) to the person you want to receive the account benefit (your e-books or music library). You can also give specific directions to a personal representative upon your death, for example, to login to your Facebook page and post a memorial message or your obituary.

Some businesses are starting to cash in on this issue - LegacyLocker and SecureSafe are cloud platforms which allow you to store documents, files, passwords and other information in the secure environment of these companies' servers. You then can grant an heir a password to access all of this information, which is stored in one location.

The companies who maintain these accounts - Facebook, Google, Amazon... - do not have a uniform approach to allowing heirs to access information after your death. As this is problematic to many, governmental entities are just catching up to the need for laws surrounding this issue. As of this posting, five states have specific laws addressing fiduciary access to digital accounts after death, and the Uniform Law Commission (a group that helps draft laws for other states to pass - Minnesota passed a version of the Uniform Probate Code) is working on a uniform code to address these issues. But until such a law is passed, you will need to work within the framework of existing law, and the policies of these companies that maintain your digital assets. If you have digital assets, or are interested in making special directions about your "digital life" after your death, I invite you to give me a call or email me.

See this and my other blog posts at www.jmwlaw.com/posts