Why You Must Put Digital Assets in Your Will or Estate Plan

Think about your daily activities and how many of them involve the internet.

Whether you conduct your banking and bill paying online, post or browse social media, send and receive emails, upload photos or view medical records, a good part of your day may be spent online. But with the amount of information out there, what happens to those assets, known as your digital legacy, after you die?

“Someone’s digital legacy is often shaped by interactions the person made and information they created before they died, which might include their social media profiles, online conversations, photos, videos, gaming profiles and their website or blog,” says James Norris, founder of the Digital Legacy Association, which is based in Greater London.

That’s why creating a digital estate plan is becoming increasingly important. Whether you specify it in your will or through your estate’s lawyers, assign digital beneficiaries through a service or compile a list of accounts and passwords to give to a trusted family member or friend, you don’t want to leave your loved ones scrambling.

Digital legacies are still relatively new

Most people don’t even think about their digital footprint, but they should, says Tim Bajarin, technology analyst and chairman of Creative Strategies in San Jose, California.

“Many of us have created an incredible legacy of content over the years,” he says. Bajarin recommends adding a trustee for your digital content if you’re working with a lawyer.

Along with coauthoring Digital Legacy: Take Control of Your Digital Afterlife in 2020, former Google executives Rikard Steiber and Daniel Sieberg launched GoodTrust in Palo Alto, California, to securely store and manage digital depositories of documents, social media accounts, websites and wills for delivery to someone you specify before you die.

“We’ve been living in a connected world for about 25 years, … so many of us have amassed a lot of online content,” says Steiber, GoodTrust CEO. “Managing the digital presence of a loved one should be top of mind … for both pragmatic and emotional reasons.” The pandemic showed us how unprepared we are for death.

For more details on why it’s important to put digital assets in your will or estate plan, from AARP, CLICK HERE.