Digital Assets and Estate Planning

The last 20 years have seen monumental global change due to the normalization of everything from cable internet through to smartphones. Technology is an extraordinarily prevalent part of our daily lives with everything from banking through to socializing happening online.

This has had logical impacts on nearly every part of traditional industries and behaviors yet in many cases there are serious gaps in how we’ve adapted the accepted norms of our societies to technological advancements.

One important aspect of this is our assets and how we manage them on a legal level. With the advent of digital file-keeping, currencies, and media, the landscape of legal entitlement and processes has changed vastly.

For estate planning specifically, there are many people who haven’t even begun to consider how their digital assets affect the contents of their Will, let alone amended their Will to reflect these assets. This is of considerable concern legally speaking as well as for the wellbeing of your loved ones — in terms of your legacy, accessing documents, and access to any nominated inheritances.

Helen Tavroges and Rosie Taylor write for Lexology, “Digital assets often only exist online, so unless you give the necessary information to your executors or administrators (on your death) or your attorneys or deputy (in the event of you losing mental capacity) they are unlikely to know what digital assets you have and how you want them dealt with in the event that you can no longer access them.”

The following infographic ‘Digital Assets and Estate Planning’ delves into this topic further.

Provided thanks to I Will Solicitors, this graphic is an explainer with essential information that provides a thorough outline of the nature of this asset class, steps for managing the different types of digital assets, and ideas for approaching this with your legal representative. In addition to the different types of asset, it also unpacks the laws around intellectual property for digital media content and managing legacy settings on social media accounts.