What is digital estate planning?

Q: What is digital estate planning?

—Wondering

A: Dear Wondering:

Digital estate planning involves protecting your digital and online assets like cryptocurrency, websites, financial information, emails, photos and videos, social media accounts, etc.

Proper digital estate planning can prevent huge hassles and losses over inaccessible accounts and/or missing passwords.

For example, if the deceased owns cryptocurrency, but the heirs don’t know the account exists or how to access it, vast sums of money could vanish forever. Moreover, cryptocurrency, websites, bank accounts, and publishing rights have the potential to continue generating revenue, so it’s not just the current value that’s at risk.

As with all estate planning, digital estate planning involves listing all digital assets and detailing exactly what should be done with them. It also requires securely listing all related passwords and security keys, so these assets can be accessed and managed.

Digital estate planning is fairly new, and there are only a few state laws and the policies of tech firms like Facebook and Google governing it, so it’s vital you hire professional help for proper protection. We have access to a service that can help you to easily inventory all of your digital assets and ensure they pass to your loved ones seamlessly.

A Personal Family Lawyer®, will ensure all of your digital assets are properly included and protected in your estate plan.