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Digital Assets and Estate Planning

By David M. Goldman

Back in 2006 and 2007 I wrote several articles on Digital Assets and Estate Planning. Now that we are in 2009, there is even more need for Digital Asset protection in your Florida Estate Planning Documents.

Digital assets are those that expire upon your death and are often associated with Email and website accounts. Most of these accounts are not actual property. They are licenses and these licenses generally expire upon your death. A new company Legacy Locker is attempting to solve this problem through a web based tool that stores account login and passwords and purports to transfer this information to the designated beneficiary upon your death or incapacity.

While their software is a good idea it has some issues in that it does not resolve the fact that the license expires upon the death of the person who creates it. One solution to this problem is to create the accounts in the name of a trust of business so that when you die, the entity that owns the license is still in existence. There are other companies that do similar things such as DeathSwitch.com

My previous articles on this topic include:

Speaking (or Emailing) from the Grave
Florida Estate Planning & Digital Assets
Digital Property After Death
Florida Estate Planning: Paperless Records Leave Heirs in the Dark

There are no products that seem to provide what is truly needed by consumers at this time. The best solution is to include Digital Asset Provisions in your Florida Revocable Trust or create a separate Digital Asset Protection Trust.

Full post as published by Florida Estate Planning Lawyer Blog on April 14, 2009 (boomark / email).