Oh, how times change. When Ruggiero Law Offices were established in 1990, the internet was just starting to develop. Now, few of us can imagine our lives without it. So, while it's easy to think of securing traditional assets such as real estate, businesses, investment accounts, and heritable wealth, including digital assets in your estate plan is essential, too. You should also update an existing estate plan to cover digital property such as social media accounts, video and photo files, and domain names. We encourage our clients to review the following considerations when estate planning for digital assets.
Inventory Your Digital Property
Create a comprehensive list of your digital assets and their value, including but not limited to:
- Avatars in games that provide services or products for real money
- Monetized online video channels and social media accounts
- Blogs and websites
- Online gambling accounts
- Rights to digital theater works, movies, music, or literature
- Domain names
- Digital videos and photos
- Non-fungible tokens
- Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin
- Digital music files
Periodically review your list to incorporate new types of technology and changing values.
Ensure Access
Your family members must be able to access these digital assets when settling your estate. Your estate plan should include a thorough list of passwords and complete asset instructions that will go to your executor or personal representative upon your death. Without such a list, ever-evolving digital privacy laws can make it difficult for your family to enter your accounts, even with the help of a computer professional.
Create backups of cloud data and store them in an online safe deposit box. You can also back up digital copies of important documents such as wills, birth certificates, tax records, account statements, and insurance policies.
Our estate planning professionals will help you create or revise documents such as your will and living trust to outline explicit permission for your executor or other family members to access your online accounts. Doing so can streamline the process of transferring these assets to your intended beneficiaries.