Who would have thought years ago technology would take over society and be a constant in our lives every single minute of the day? Since the mid-1990s, society has grown more dependent on technology and computers. However, this reliance on technology has not come without some issues regarding estate planning and estate administration.
Before computers, people saved paper copies of everything, or at least we were supposed to. We had carbon copy paper, photocopies, and fax machines. When a loved one passed away, mountains of paperwork would be in the house and it would take days or weeks to go sort and sift through the paperwork to locate important documents. Now, society has turned the page and is now going paperless and has created what the legal profession calls “Digital assets.”
Digital assets are defined as an electronic record in which an individual has a right or an interest. Prominent examples of digital assets include, but are not limited to data, text, emails, documents, video, images, sounds, social media content, social networking content, health care records, health insurance records, the list is endless. To put this in easy terms if you need a username and password to access the information, it is a digital asset.
The issue becomes when an individual registers to use a website and he/she just clicks “I agree to the terms” there is potentially a term that few have ever thought about. When you pass away, the website does not have to provide your login information to your family as it is deemed confidential. In some aspect, the law has caught up and corporations are more likely to provide the information, but not willingly. There is a way to avoid this entire headache and it comes in when drafting your estate plan. Now more than ever, people are saving and storing information on the internet, computers, and cell phones. There can be information saved everywhere that you want your loved ones to be able to access. Maybe you were working on your memoirs or you had some old pictures you scanned and saved on your laptop. Your loved ones cannot access your computer without a username and password.
Your estate plan consists of everything you own, from personal property, to stocks and bonds, to investments, to yes even your username and passwords to all your accounts. With the advent of digital assets, it is an attorney’s job to inquire about these assets from his/her client. The attorney needs to take the time to sit with the client and go over the client’s entire portfolio of assets.
When drafting your estate plan with Campanile Law, LLC. your attorney will sit down with you and ask you to provide a document with all of your username and passwords for every website, phone application, and computer you have access to. This document does not need to be placed in your estate plan, but at a minimum should be placed with the documents. If you want to leave digital assets to a certain individual, that can be easily incorporated into the estate plan documents.
If you have any questions about estate planning or want to schedule an appointment to begin your legacy planning journey, please contact David P. Campanile at david@campanilelaw.com or call (201)-485-6045.