Digital Assets in Your Will: Protecting Your Online Accounts in NY

Estate planning lawyers sometimes tell their clients that the probate court thinks of a deceased person’s property in only three categories, namely real estate, money, and personal property. Personal property is everything that is not money or real estate; it is your stuff. Your personal property might include clothing, furniture, musical instruments, books, or anything else. Unless they own especially valuable personal property, such as artwork, jewelry, or collectible memorabilia, most people do not bother making specific provisions about their personal property, and the heirs do not bother fighting about it. To them, it is just clutter. The decedent is too busy being dead to worry about whether his surviving relatives place as much importance on his souvenir shot glasses from all 50 states as he did. Yes, accounting for personal property in your estate plan is important, but these categories are outdated. These days, the property that people worry the most about is neither animal, nor vegetable, nor mineral. If your life is chronically online, then so will be the things you leave behind after you die. To find out more about accounting for your digital assets in your estate plan, contact a Bronx estate planning lawyer.

Be as Specific as Possible in Your Will About Your Wishes for Your Digital Assets

In your will, you should account for the transfer of all your property, including digital assets such as online accounts. This is especially important if your online accounts are income-generating assets. If you monetized your YouTube channel, and it has enough views to bring in substantial amounts of money, then it will continue to generate income for the family member who inherits it. Your will should be more specific than just about who inherits which bytes of data that belonged to you when you were alive. You can also indicate what the heir should do with your property. Should he take it down or make it remain available? Should he post new content under your screen name?

Digital assets with no apparent monetary value can still be a source of probate disputes. For example, what will happen to your vlog which never generated income, and never tried to, but contained priceless wisdom for readers. Do you want your heirs to keep your vlog online? Which heir will have admin access to it?

The instructions for what your heirs should do with your digital assets might be so complicated that it will be difficult to explain them in the provisions of your will. You should have a separate document for each digital asset, indicating your wishes for what the successor should do with it. These documents should also contain the login information for your accounts. Apple enables customers to assign a successor to the Apple account. The successor can get access to the decedent’s accounts upon uploading the decedent’s death certificate.

Schedule a Confidential Consultation With a Bronx Estate Planning Attorney

An estate planning lawyer can help you draft a version of your estate plan that reflects your digital estate.  Contact Cavallo & Cavallo in the Bronx, New York to set up a consultation.

Source:

blog.1password.com/guide-to-inherited-digital-estate-plan/