The term “Digital Assets” is foreign to many people. Yet it is becoming one of the most important assets any of us own these days with the increase in our digital footprints. Digital Assets include everything that is done electronically through the internet. This includes all our accounts, passwords, security, photos, messages, and a host of other similar items. If you stop and think about your own digital footprint, I think you will be shocked at just how wide and deep it is today.
In the last few years digital assets have received considerable attention in estate planning. There have been lawsuits filed over access to them after someone passes away. There have also been legislative attempts to provide greater access to them for estate administrators. One trend is to make them more accessible in case you don’t leave any instructions with anyone so the courts can access these records to determine what is going on within an estate. For example, if you don’t give anyone access to your financial accounts and you pass away, the courts want to have access to see who you might owe money to and what money you have to distribute.
Almost every Estate Plan today needs to have some provisions in them for how to handle your digital assets. And there are more programs available to help you keep track of them and to easily make these available to the courts should this be necessary. The key is to have a plan for how to share these should something happen to you. There are actually four different basic categories of digital assets people might need to consider, as the Xenia Daily Gazette points out in "Estate Planning and Digital Assets," including:
- Things that exist only digitally but that have some monetary value. This can include such items as domain names for websites and cryptocurrencies.
- Another category includes digital accounts that provide access to things that have value in the real world. If you access your bank account online, for example, the information about that access is a digital asset.
- Another potential asset includes messages meant to communicate digitally with others, such as emails, texts, or social media posts.
- Finally, there is another category of digital assets that includes items as photos and videos that are stored digitally.
This is an entirely new world to most people. And while they have been acquiring more and more digital assets over the years, it is unlikely they have updated their estate plan to reflect this and to give access to those that need access should something happen to you. If you haven’t met with your estate planning attorney and specifically talked about your digital assets, you should get a date on the calendar to do this sooner than later. It could be critical to both your estate and your loved ones.