Increasingly, individuals are leaving behind troves of digital assets — social media accounts, emails, photos stored online, cryptocurrency, website domains, and more. As part of your estate plan, it is important to consider these assets and plan for them accordingly.
Step One: Make a list
The first step is to make a list of all of your digital assets so that your loved ones will know what you have and where they can find it. Include all of your important passwords, online accounts (email, Facebook, Paypal, amazon.com, etc), and digital property like domain names. Password apps like 1password or lastpass can simplify this process. If you don’t use an app, it’s okay to print out a list of accounts, login and password information and place it with your will — just remember to update the list when you change passwords.
While you are writing this list, double-check what it is that you own. For example, you may have “bought” a song of iTunes, but what you actually bought was a non-transferable license to use/listen to the song. Before you leave your music (or movie, or audiobook, or other online) collection to your best friend, make sure that you actually own that collection.
Step Two: Protect it
It is increasingly common for my clients to store a scanned copy of their signed documents in a cloud folder online. There are many secure platforms for this, including dropbox and G Suite. It is equally important to back-up assets that are stored online. I find an external hard drive makes it easy for me to save my online files, like photos. A lot of companies make this very easy — for example, Facebook has a One-Click Download option to download all of your information to your computer. Depending on the types of assets you have stored online, you may need to do this daily, weekly, or monthly.
Step Three: Decide who should access it
In many cases, a blanket authorization allowing your personal representative to access your digital accounts is appropriate. But sometimes, you may want a different individual to manage some of your digital accounts. At minimum, your will should include language to specifically allow your fiduciaries to bypass, reset, or recover your passwords. Without your express consent, it is illegal for someone to change your passwords and companies with digital assets will not release information about your account to a third party without your express consent or a judge’s order — even if you are no longer with us.
