Planning Your Digital Estate
It may seem difficult to believe now, but it wasn't all that long ago that everything we had was where we could access it; the garage, a hall closet, the trunk of our car, a storage unit, or even a safety deposit box at our local bank. Between bank statements, receipts and unpaid bills, we always left a paper trail, so almost anything could be found and all unfinished business could be discovered and handled.
These days, however, more and more of our lives are conducted online, and that paper trail is less clear-cut, mostly because it's not paper. It's also harder to find your assets, because most of them are located on a server somewhere. Hopefully, there's a copy of everything on your computer, tablet, smartphone or auxiliary hard drive, but what if it's not?
That is why it is far more common these days for estate planning attorneys to encourage their clients to include their digital assets with their estate when drafting their estate plan. The landscape is changing quickly, and the problem with digital estates is not going to go away, it's going to get worse.
Digital assets can encompass almost anything you do online, including social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Tumblr, your Netflix account, your PlayStation or Xbox 360 gaming accounts, or even the photos and other items from accounts you forgot you even had. Then, there are the online banking accounts, including PayPal, or your blogs and web hosting accounts.
Unfortunately, many estate planning attorneys mention to their clients and the clients are caught off guard; they don't even think about their importance. But they can wreak havoc after someone passes. Not paying online hosting accounts can lead to the loss of everything you have placed online. You could lose the only copy of a manuscript, or you could see your blog just completely disappear. Worse, without any safeguards, someone could gain access to any private information that may be contained there, some of which might be embarrassing. It's also possible that accounts you wanted to keep others away from might be discovered and accessed by the wrong person.
If you don't include your online assets and control them yourself, someone else will control them for you, or a lot of what you've created could be lost forever. So, when you start planning your estate, be sure to include those.
