Have you given any thought to who will receive your digital photos or
iTunes collection? Assets like these, which we will call digital
assets, are becoming much more prevalent with so many places to
purchase and store them on the internet. These assets are subject
to property law as intangible assets and contract law since your use of
certain media are governed by the contract that you "signed"
when you joined a site. Because of their uniqueness as assets,
they are not talked about much from an estate planning prospective, but
probably should be. After all, if you have thousands of
photographs on your computer or the Internet, who should get the rights
to them?
As important may be who will get access to all of your online accounts
(like Facebook, Twitter and The DocSafe) if you
become disabled or at the time of your death. Imagine at your
death that your loved ones cannot gain access to your accounts for a
variety of reasons - they don't know that they exist, or they don't
have the account information (username or password).
What happens if you own
several domain names that are valuable? We own several domains (www.trustedcounselors.com, for
example) which get renewal notices through our email accounts. If
our loved ones don't know about or have access to our email accounts,
our domain registrations may very well expire and be lost forever.
Here are a few suggestions for digital assets:
1. Make an inventory of all of your digital assets and update it
at least annually. Your inventory should also include a listing
of all websites in which you have a username and password along with those
usernames and passwords.
2. Share your inventory with a trusted family member or advisor.
Give them instructions to access and secure your digital assets
in the event of death or disability. In doing so, you would be
smart to give this inventory to your named personal representative and
agent under your power-of-attorney. Keeping your inventory in The
DocSafe will
also allow your trusted family members ready access.
3. If you have specific wishes for the disposition of those
assets, include them in your Florida Will or Florida Revocable Trust.
Failing to do so may result in family members who will fight of
your digital assets.
4. Contact us if you need help updating your estate plan.
Your digital assets, in particular your photos, may not have
monetary value, but they likely have sentimental value. Do not
let your family have unnecessary fights over these assets!
Be on the look-out for a story on digital assets on Fox13 this month -
we were interviewed and provided some insight for the story!
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