Why You Need a Digital Asset Estate Plan
Who can access your digital accounts after your death? A nearly decade-long legal battle following the death of a man named Armond raised this important question.
Armond died in a bicycle accident at age 43. With no will, his estate passed to a surviving brother and sister. As the siblings began going through his assets, they realized that having access to Armond’s emails could help them identify assets and accounts. They asked Yahoo for access to the email account and explained their reasoning. Yahoo declined, citing the Stored Communications Act, a 1986 federal law governing online privacy. Yahoo claimed that sharing the emails would violate this law. The siblings sued, and the case proceeded through the courts until reaching the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which ruled in the family’s favor in 2017.
This scenario illustrates how challenging managing digital assets can be. It also raises another consideration: Do you want your family members reading every email you’ve ever sent or seeing every post you’ve created?
Our Digital Lives
We lead digital lives today: photos are stored in the cloud, social media records our personal history, digital wallets contain cryptocurrency, and creative works may be password protected. Without digital estate planning, those assets will persist indefinitely online, remain vulnerable to hackers and thieves, or disappear if platforms detect prolonged inactivity.
As digital estate planning startups emerge, ethical debates continue about what should happen to digital lives living on the cloud. These private and sometimes intimate exchanges will endure long after their creators have passed.
The Legal Framework
Digital accounts face several challenges: they’re vulnerable to hackers, difficult to identify, and easy to disappear. Executors settling estates often find themselves locked out of accounts by default. Forty-seven states have adopted some version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which provides a legal framework allowing people to designate someone to take over their digital assets when they die – but only if a person actively makes this choice.
Given how few Americans have an estate plan, even fewer have made plans for online assets. Some major tech companies have added features allowing a legacy contact to take over accounts after users die, but these options remain limited. Facebook allows a legacy contact to view and download posts, but cannot access Messenger history.
Protect Your Digital Legacy
Unless you make plans to address it, your digital life will outlive you. Failing to include digital assets in your estate plan could also make your estate more vulnerable to scammers. A better approach is to place both your traditional and digital assets under the protection of a comprehensive estate plan, created by an experienced estate planning attorney.
If you need assistance including digital assets in your estate plan, contact The Stegall Law Firm today to schedule a consultation.
