Can you leave your iTunes collection to someone in your Will? How does your executor terminate your Gmail, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts? We all use online services but have you ever considered what will happen after you are gone? From an estate planning perspective, as many parts of your life may be managed digitally, it is important to consider your digital assets and how you wish them to be dealt with upon your death.
What is a digital asset?
The broad term "digital asset" can be used to describe all of your digitally stored information, online accounts and digital devices. This includes information and accounts associated with:
- Social media
- Online banking
- Photo-sharing
- Music storage
- Gaming
The chances are many of your digital assets will have little or no monetary value. However, they can be of huge sentimental value and you may want to ensure you can pass them onto your loved ones. Some may not even belong to you – they may be 'loaned' to you under a licence as was shown by the false story of Bruce Willis about to sue iTunes. It is important that you set out clearly how you wish your personal representatives to deal with your digital assets on your death. You might want some online accounts to be deleted immediately and to leave others to survive as a legacy, allowing loved ones to access your personal e-mails and photographs. It is important that you include digital assets in your estate planning. In particular, in order to fulfil your testamentary wishes your personal representatives will need to know what digital assets you have, where they are held and how to access them that is, they will need details of usernames and passwords.
Estate planning
Estate planning for your digital assets is a way of ensuring your intentions are fulfilled. Some estate planning techniques you may want to consider include:
- Grant your personal representatives appropriate powers in your will to access, control, delete and transfer your digital assets
- Create an inventory of your digital assets, including usernames and passwords, to be kept with your Will and ensure you update this regularly
- Make specific gifts of certain digital assets to beneficiaries in your Will
- Speak to your personal representatives and loved ones about your wishes relating to the identification, access and transfer of your digital assets
The future
Many of us currently possess some kind of digital asset. It is inevitable, given the continuous developments in technology, that a number of our future assets will be classed as digital assets. It is therefore prudent to consider digital assets from an estate-planning perspective. Estate planning for digital assets can help ensure that they are dealt with in accordance with our wishes, whilst also giving our personal representatives the power to deal with such assets after our death.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
