The Importance of Digital Asset Provisions

Have you ever considered what happens to digital assets after a death? Let us share a quick story with you to give you some insight on why digital asset provisions are important:

We were recently contacted by a Successor Trustee looking to obtain access to the client’s digital property and accounts. Unfortunately, there was no digital asset provision in place before the passing of the client. Due to this issue, a variety of social media accounts were unable to be accessed, even when contact was made with the social media corporations. This meant that all social media content was to be locked live on the internet and items such as photos, music, social media accounts were unable to be altered, accessed, or even deleted after the passing of our client.

This illustrates the importance of incorporating such planning into a comprehensive estate plan.  Expecting a client to create and maintain an up-to-date roster of their digital property along with usernames and passwords is uncommon.

In order to avoid such issues as mentioned in the story above, we began incorporating digital asset language into our estate plans in 2016.  If your estate plan was drafted earlier than 2016 or if you are looking to create an estate plan for the first time, you might want to include this type of language to protect your digital assets.

Contact us in order to verify if your digital assets are protected. If not, we will work hard to create an amendment and make sure you are properly covered!