The Petrosewicz Law Firm Estate Planning Blog

The Next Wave in Retirement Planning: Digital and Cyber Assets

You’ve worked hard for decades, saving and planning for retirement. Don’t put it at risk, by delaying having an estate plan created by a qualified estate planning attorney, advises The Press of Atlantic City in the article “Estate planning for your digital and cyber assets.” However, here’s the thing: even when you have a comprehensive estate plan in place, meaning a last will and testament, a power of attorney, a health care power of attorney and the appropriate trusts, you’re not quite done.

That’s because today we have an entirely new type of property that must be dealt with in estate planning. Unlike tangible property that people have been handing down for centuries, this is a relatively new kind of property: digital assets. One of the problems with digital assets is that, unlike paper documents, your family members can’t simply sift through decades of physical records to find out what you own. The online world is endless, and if they don’t know what websites to look at, there’s simply no way that they can find your digital assets.

What is a digital asset? They include such things as:

• Mobile devices, like cell phones, laptops and tablets
• Email accounts—all of them
• Social media profiles including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
• Sites that contain music, photos and other personal information
• Your personal desktop
• Online banking, investment accounts and cybercurrency
• Online gaming accounts
• Online bill paying, like utilities, EZ-Pass and any automatic payments
• Websites or blogs

You’ll want to let your executor know what you want to be done with your digital assets. Some platforms have the ability for you to express your wishes for your digital assets, like Facebook. What do you want to happen to your pages when you are gone? Do you want people to be able to see your pages, or to post on them? Would you want them to be taken down a month after you pass, or left up permanently?

You’ll need to list out all your digital assets, your username and your passwords and provide a directive to specifically state what you want to happen to each website. Yes, it will take time and it may be tedious, but imagine how challenging it will be for your family members to try to track down all your digital assets. Speak with your estate planning attorney as to how to share this information—but don’t put it in a will, because your will becomes a public document if your estate goes through probate (which happens to most wills).

Just as you have taken the time to have an estate plan created, making sure to have a digital assets plan is a gift to your loved ones. With these details taken care of, your family will be able to focus their attention on taking care of each other, dealing with your estate and going through the grief process. You’ll have spared them a lot of additional stress and expenses.

An estate planning attorney will be well worth the investment. You can be confident that your will is going to be prepared in accordance with the laws of your state, and that your family will be protected as you wished.

The Petrosewicz Law Firm can assist you with your estate planning needs.  Contact us today at (281) 344-9455 or [email protected].  

Reference: The Press of Atlantic City (July 4, 2019) “Estate planning for your digital and cyber assets”

Are Your Digital Assets Under Your Control?

After the personal possessions have been distributed from a loved one’s home, what’s left are the final leftovers: old checkbooks, bank statements, employment records and miscellaneous documents that, once finally cleared out, will be gone forever. However, unlike these tangible, physical archives, digital archives will remain, says the Press-Republican in the article “The great digital beyond,” unless steps are taken.

These are relatively new issues that many people are just starting to realize must be dealt with. Some information is saved on personal storage space, such as internal and external hard drives and thumb drives. Others live in the cloud, through social platforms like Facebook, Google Mail and YouTube.

What becomes of all that information when someone dies? Does it live on forever? How is it protected, or is it protected?

As more people have had to deal with the management of digital assets, more resources have been created. There are now companies that offer to help with this process. There are websites that allow you to upload all your information and set notifications to family members at future dates. They also handle the requirements from social platforms, so that digital assets are managed properly and legally.

Estate planning attorneys now include digital assets in their documents. However, you will also have to do some homework.

Just as you need to do an audit of your physical and financial assets to make sure your estate plan addresses their proper distribution, whether before or after death, individuals now need to create an inclusive list of their digital assets, including user names, passwords, answers to questions that are used to verify identities and what they want to happen to the digital asset after they have passed.

Some online services do have policies in place for providing access to accounts, after the account owner has died. Facebook lets users designate a “Legacy Contact,” who is legally allowed to enter an account to post, respond to friend requests and update the profile and cover photos. The Legacy Contact can be given the authority to download photos, posts and profile information or they can be given the permission to just delete the account. Google has an inactive “Account Manager” that lets users share parts of their account data or notify someone, if they have been inactive for a certain amount of time.

Critical point: Never put your user name, password or security question answers into your will, just as you would not put bank account numbers and financial access information into a will. If your will goes through probate, which is likely to be the case, it becomes a public document. You don’t want to hand the keys to your kingdom to the world at large. The information should be provided to your attorney and your heirs in a separate document.

Talk with your estate planning attorney about your digital assets. If your estate plan was created years ago and never updated, it is likely that there is no mention of digital assets. It’s time for an update.

The Petrosewicz Law Firm can assist you with your estate planning needs.  Contact us today at (281) 344-9455 or [email protected].  

Reference: Press-Republican (Sep. 23, 2018) “The great digital beyond,”

Digital Assets and Advisors: What Only You Can Tell Them

Encouraging people to have their wills updated is part of an on-going educational process for almost every estate planning attorney. Now there’s a new area that has to be updated: digital assets.

As explained in Financial Advisor’s article, “Unlocking Clients’ Digital Lives,” if no one can access your digital assets, including accounts, many could be lost, stolen by a hacker or deleted.

Forty-one states and the U.S. Virgin Islands have passed laws that allow a financial planner or other fiduciary to access digital assets upon the death of a client, and four other states plus the District of Columbia are considering similar legislation.

In Missouri, the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act allows a fiduciary to be granted access to a person’s electronic records or digital assets in a will, trust, power of attorney or another document.

The way we live our personal lives and the way we conduct our personal business and financial matters have changed, so we must address digital assets in our estate planning to reflect these changes.

Challenges are created if those digital assets are not addressed in the estate plan. Striking a balance between privacy rights and the need to settle an estate, can become an expensive and time-consuming issue. One family had to bring a lawsuit to access the emails of their son, a Marine who was killed while serving our country.

If you manage your bill paying and investments online, someone will need to be able to control bill payments, especially if they are on an autopayment schedule.

Start by preparing a complete inventory of all digital assets, including a description of each one and how it is accessed with names, passwords and security questions. Find out what each online platform requires, if a fiduciary or executor needs to access those accounts. Each platform, like each financial institution, has their own forms and procedures.

This information should be stored in a secure place. Some people prefer a password-protected digital location.

Your estate planning attorney will be able to help you make sure that your estate plan reflects your wishes for your digital assets. Just as you need to update your estate plan every few years to make sure it still achieves your personal goals and complies with new laws, information about digital assets needs to be updated as well.

The Petrosewicz Law Firm can assist you with your estate planning needs.  Contact us today at (281) 344-9455 or [email protected].  

Reference: Financial Advisor (Aug. 21, 2018) “Unlocking Clients’ Digital Lives”