Digital Inheritance: Decide What Happens to Your Digital Assets
What is a digital legacy?
Delaware was the first state to enact a law that gives heirs the right to inherit digital assets the same way that they would inherit physical assets. Under Delaware’s digital legacy law, a digital asset includes texts, emails, pictures, videos, software, social media posts, and even health insurance records. Under the Delaware law, the account holder has the power to decide what happens to their digital assets upon their death, whereas before, that power remained with the company managing the content, website, etc. Other states, including Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Oregon, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, have passed similar laws allowing someone to leave a digital inheritance, and are specific regarding when and how access can be granted to digital custodians and fiduciaries.In states where there is no law governing a digital legacy, a user can still affect the fate of these accounts to some degree. Some websites will allow a spouse or relatives to obtain passwords, and grant access to files and accounts. Some websites will simply terminate the account after someone dies. From a legal standpoint, through their terms of service and privacy policies, websites generally have no legal obligation to provide access to data and digital assets when one of their users dies.
Social Media and E-mail Accounts
How digital assets are handled after a user’s death vary significantly from site to site. Facebook and other social media platforms each have their own policies governing the handling of accounts of deceased members. Facebook, for example, allows its users to designate a legacy contact to manage certain parts of their account once they die. Twitter, however, does not allow a user to grant anyone access to the account upon his/her death, though immediate family members and people who are authorized to act on the user’s behalf can request that the account be deactivated. Instagram, in contrast, will memorialize an account, which cannot be changed or logged into, but will remain visible.E-mail accounts also vary from provider to provider. Google lets a user add up to ten friends and family members who will be notified if an account is inactive for a certain amount of time, and who will, with the user’s permission, be allowed access data from the account for up to three months. Microsoft has a next of kin process that will grant loved ones access to a user’s account data after his/her death, while Yahoo, on the other hand, will not release any data to anyone.
Leave instructions for your digital legacy
One of the biggest problems a digital heir may face is knowing exactly what accounts the decedent had. For the sake of your heirs, you should keep a record of every account you have, account numbers, and passwords, and store them in a safe place—one that may be accessible after your death. For security and privacy reasons, however, usernames, account numbers and passwords should not be stored in the same place.The best way to protect your digital legacy is to leave instructions to those who will be handling your estate, explaining your wishes regarding the handling of your digital assets. While in some instances, you are not the “owner” of the content and cannot legally transfer it to an heir, you can still leave instructions for how to manage the content upon your death.
Leaving or inheriting a digital legacy can be complex, especially in states that do not have statues governing the issue. If you need assistance with digital estate planning or help taking control of a loved one’s digital assets, find an experienced attorney by quickly posting a short summary of your legal needs on Legal Services Link, and let the perfect attorney come to you!
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Posted - 07/28/2016
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