Estate Planning for Digital Assets
What happens to your digital assets if you become incapacitated or you die? Our great grandparents never had to think about this question. But in this day and age we need to because our digital lives are so intertwined with our in person lives.
Have you thought about who you want to have access to your email messages and to your digital photos if you got very sick? Have you thought about what would happen to your social media accounts once you are gone? Do you want your LinkedIn account to get shut down and your Facebook account to get memorialized? Do you want anyone to be able to access your phone and your text messages? What about crypto-currency? If you have a monetizing YouTube account do you want it to continue for the benefit of your heirs?
You have options:
Do Nothing
If you do not make a plan for your digital assets they will not necessarily be handled the way that you want them to be. Your heirs could lose complete access or the accounts could be left open indefinitely. The default is the terms of service for each platform which is generally designed by corporate counsel to protect the platform and not you.
Use Online Tools
Some digital platforms have online tools such as Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Meta’s Legacy settings. These tools allow you to choose whether your account will be deleted if the platform found out about your death, if your account becomes memorialized and/ or if a survivor could download your data.
Use Estate Planning
The law has come a long way in how it handles digital assets. Current law, Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which took effect in California (California Bill AB-691) on January 1, 2017 (Cal. Prob. Code §§ 870 et seq.) allows for the people we assign to take over our assets and affairs, to have access to online accounts after death or incapacitation only if we agree to it explicitly.
What you can do to protect yourself:
Take an inventory of your online assets and your online accounts
Make a plan for who and what access you want to provide
Execute your plan by assigning someone in your will, trust and/ or power of attorney to handle your digital assets
Sign up for a secure password vault such as 1Password or LastPass
Update legacy settings on your email and your social media accounts so that they align with your estate planning
