Without appropriate authority granted to an executor or attorney for property, the fiduciary may be denied access to digital assets.
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These two cases highlight the risks of failing to plan for digital assets with personal value in estates. Personal digital assets can include photos and documents stored in the cloud, social media accounts, websites and blogs, genealogy websites and even accounts someone may prefer remain private after death, such as dating apps.
“Pre-planning tools are quite lacking. They’re very few and far between,” says Christine Brunsden, co-founder at Legacy You in Burlington, Ont. “People don’t know how to do it. They don’t know the reasons why they should do it … They don’t even know how to get started,” Ms. Brunsden says. “It’s incumbent upon the advisor to bring this to the fore – but I would say many advisors don’t understand this either.”
He recommends listing details for these accounts in a document that’s updated regularly and that accompanies the relevant legal documents. Don’t include passwords as sharing passwords is generally prohibited in an online account’s terms of service, but do state preferences for what should happen to each online account in the case of incapacity or death.
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