People establishing or revising their estate plans often focus on addressing their most valuable resources. They want to ensure that their spouses can continue living in their homes or that their children receive any remaining balance in their retirement savings accounts.
The focus on financial resources and physical assets can lead to oversights during the estate planning process. Particularly if people drafted their estate plans years ago, they may need to revise their documents to address a type of asset that may not have been a priority before.
Digital assets are now an important consideration for people establishing their estate plans. If they don’t plan in advance, their loved ones may lose access to some of their most valuable or emotionally meaningful resources.
What digital assets require consideration?
Some people have digital assets that are worth money. They purchase cryptocurrency or non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They own domain names that they hold as investments or run successfully monetized social media accounts.
Others may have digital resources ranging from digital document storage services where they keep their photographs and videos to their personal social media accounts. Each of those resources may require consideration in an estate plan to protect the testator’s legacy and the rights of their beneficiaries.
What issues should testators address?
Those who own valuable digital assets generally need to identify them and provide information about who should inherit those resources. They may need to draft special documents or provide information about their accounts to ensure that personal representatives and beneficiaries have access to their digital assets.
People may also need to provide information about any paid document storage online. That way, personal representatives can recover, back up and preserve their important online storage so that others can access it later.
They may also need to provide direction regarding social media accounts. They could arrange for specific people to assume control over successful groups and monetized pages. They can also make arrangements for their loved ones to access and memorialize their personal social media pages.
Making the time to address digital assets is an important component of comprehensive estate planning. Testators creating new estate plans or preparing to update existing ones may need guidance as they try to effectively address their digital holdings, and that’s okay.