You may be comfortable that your have your estate plan in order. You have a will, a durable power of attorney, a living will and a health care proxy. But do you have a digital estate plan?
In the past, we kept albums full of snapshots, vinyl records and shoeboxes full of correspondence. Now our photos are all on Flickr and iPhone, our music is downloaded from iTunes and our correspondence is email via Yahoo or Google. Naomi Cahn, a law professor at George Washington University, stated that most adults have 20-25 accounts on the internet. And many of those accounts are for banking or investments.
Have you given instructions to your family on what to do with your internet accounts if you should die? And do they even know how to access those accounts? User names, passwords, internet addresses?
The family of Ricky Rash, a 15-year old who committed suicide in 2011, discovered how difficult it was to recover information from their deceased son’s internet account. In an effort to understand why he had taken his own life, they requested but were refused access to his Facebook account.
Facebook claimed that according to the Stored Communications Act of 1986 – the federal law that governs the protection of a person’s electronic data – even the account of a minor is protected from access by his parents or anyone else. Other sites and providers interpret the legislation this way, making access all but impossible.
There are only five states that have taken any steps to help recover the internet data of a deceased person—Indiana, Idaho and Oklahoma legislation covers social media and blogging accounts, while Connecticut and Rhode Island legislation covers only email.
What does this mean for you? It is critical that you create a digital estate plan. The listing of internet accounts needs to be comprehensive. Information must include:
- the name of the account
- the contents of the account
- the URL address
- username
- password
- instructions for the disposition of the account including the person to oversee such disposition.
I have created a new spreadsheet to gather this information. You can download a copy at http://www.YourDigitalEstatePlan.com
There is a whole new industry that has been created to service your digital estate including Everplans.com, a new digital estate planning service. An Everplan is a secure, digital archive of everything your loved ones will need should something happen to you. It contains:
- Wills, Trusts, and insurance policies
- Important accounts and passwords
- Info about your home: bills, vendors, etc.
- Health and medical information
- Advance Directives and DNRs
- Final wishes and funeral preferences
There are also online memorial services to celebrate your client’s life, including www.Bcelebrated.com, and www.MyWonderfulLife.com. These services enable your clients to create their own memorials before they pass away. Facebook and Twitter also offer these services for family members.
The importance of having a digital estate plan will increase as more and more of our assets (and access to assets) are online. Gradually laws will evolve to give family members access to deceased loved ones’ accounts. It is important to prepare your clients for the disposition of their digital assets now so that family members will not be unpleasantly surprised when they attempt to uncover them.
If you want to explore digital estate planning in more detail read Evan Carroll’s excellent book, Your Digital Afterlife. This book was the source of many of the sites I mention in this article.
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Reprinted from Bob Mauterstock’s The Gift of Communication Blog. Subscribe at http://www.GiftofCommunication.com and receive Bob’s Family Meeting Checklist Guide.
