Have You Addressed Your Digital Estate Planning?
Today our estate planning concentrates less on the kind of personal property that our parents accumulated. Your estate planning might be more appropriately called ‘digital estate planning.’
The concepts that are key to organizing our estate approach are considering:
- Online banking and investment accounts
- Payment platforms and stored balances
- Cryptocurrency and digital wallets
- Email accounts and cloud storage
- Photos, videos, and scanned documents stored online
- Social media and messaging accounts
- Subscriptions and recurring online services
- Online businesses, marketplaces, and monetized channels
- Domain names and digital intellectual property
- Online-only side income and stored value within apps
- Credit card and subscription rewards, airline miles and loyalty points
Locating and accessing digital estate assets should be a key focus of our Estate Planning and documents in just the same way that traditional assets are considered.
Create A Resource.
Leave positive memories and loving feelings. Don’t leave an archeological dig for your family to piece together information.
The loss of a loved one is already an emotion-filled time. Difficulty accessing important information causes unnecessary stress.
Thoughtful planning can avoid delays in paying bills or managing cash flow, avoid difficulty locating important documents, avoid trouble closing or transferring accounts, and avoid lost personal records, photos and messages. Risk of fraud or account misuse is, of course, an additional concern.
We know that your family can’t promptly protect and preserve digital assets if information is unknown or hard to locate.
Don’t Forget Your Estate Documents
Digital assets are a part of our comprehensive planning for estate health. This includes the opportunity to use traditional tools to create beneficiary designations for our accounts, and to thoughtfully select agents to act for us within powers of attorney. Up to date and comprehensive estate documents including thoughtfully selected trustees and other fiduciaries are likewise essential for your plan.
Work with your Estate Planning Attorneys to discuss these important considerations and to help your family be better able to act quickly, thoughtfully, and follow your desired plan.