TECH TALK
Protecting Digital Assets After Death
By Sarah Siedentopf
The Law Offices of Sarah Siedentopf, LLC
[email protected]
MORE AND MORE FREQUENTLY, things which used to exist in a
physical sense are now becoming
digital. E-mail is replacing paper
mail. Instead of buying movies on
disc, we can purchase films on Amazon and store them in
the cloud. Even heirlooms are becoming
digitized, with photo
albums existing online only. As technology advances and new
social media outlets
pop up, our digital assets become increasingly important to
our lives. While some
may not be of much
interest to us or our
survivors, it is important to plan ahead and
protect those digital
assets that are of continuing value.
In a general sense,
“digital assets” are items which are
stored in a binary format that include either an ownership interest
or a license to use. Currently, this
term encompasses things such as:
computer files, digital documents,
movies, audio content stored online, social media profiles, files
stored on tablets, telecommunication devices, storage devices, and
anything else that connects to the
internet. Taking all of these categories into account, you may have ac-
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cumulated a significant amount of
digital assets that you want to pass
along to family members. Or, you
may have accounts or files that you
want maintained or deleted after
you pass away. Proper planning will
help put you in the best position to
achieve your objectives.
There are a few states which have
enacted or proposed laws related to
executor1 or fiduciary2 rights to digital assets. The laws are not uniform,
1
Used here synonymously with estate
representative or personal representative
to designate the individual in charge of
administering a decedent’s estate.
2 Includes executors but also encompasses
those individuals with a legal and ethical
duty to a client or other person because of
the trusted position they maintain.
however, they all seem to be aimed
at increasing estate representative’s
rights to access digital accounts or
assets. Georgia does not have “digital asset” legislation in place, which
means that company’s individual
user agreements–and not executors–control online information
and accounts.
Not surprisingly, there are as many
policies on accessing and control-
ling online information as there
are different organizations. Facebook, for example, has a policy
stating that a person can manage
a decedent’s Facebook account, but
only if they had prior consent or
as mandated by law. Twitter allows
estate representatives or immediate
family members to manage a person’s account after they have died.
For LinkedIn, the company allows
individuals to handle other people’s
accounts “as permitted by law” or
“as necessary to comply with the