Don’t Neglect Your “Digital Estate”
Do your heirs have list of your passwords? In today's digital world it is important the your executor/trix have your passwords to access your online accounts.
After reading & bookmarking Myrl Jeffcoat post I made mental note to make my list and put it with other important papers like will, insurance, social security, investment, etc.
It’s raining here in Sacramento today. A great day to hunker down inside and take on tasks I’ve neglected recently.
My focus today will be my digital estate. I remember reading a quote from the National Association of Estate Planners and Councils, which stated half of Americans with kids are set to die without a will!
The article listed the usual issues for consideration and planning with estates – Who gets the house, your money, etc. BUT, it went a step further into an area many of us haven’t considered, the realm of our “digital estates.
Most Americans these days have developed an online presence. In some instances, that presence is extensive. Do you have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn account? What about a blog or a web domain? The majority of popular online account services have deceased-user rules and policies, which provide the family or executor of the deceased user information about what’s required to access the account.
It may be important for your survivors to have knowledge of the extent of your online presence – email accounts, photo albums, blogs, music, YouTube, etc. Personally, I have a trusted person in my family, who has knowledge of most of my on-line accounts, logins and passwords, but the article is prompting me to work on this area of my estate more extensively.
It is a thought provoking topic, and may act as a strong catalyst for consideration of these areas within your digital/on-line estate.
So folks, it isn’t simply trying to decide which of your children or grandchildren will get the family silver or china anymore. It’s about an emerging class of digital assets, which likely wouldn’t have been considered as recent as a decade ago.
One of the more important things I’m doing today is transferring valuable family pictures into an organized collection, and transferring them to flash drives for each of my children. I will store them with my valuable papers and update periodically.
PBS has a great article that addresses digital estates and their importance. The article can be accessed via: ”What Happens to Your Digital Assets After Death?”
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