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Home / How Do I Protect My Digital Assets Through My Estate Plan?

How Do I Protect My Digital Assets Through My Estate Plan?

September 7, 2016 by Jon J. Gasior, Estate Planning Attorney

Digital Assets

When we traditionally think about estate planning we think about wills and trusts and powers of attorney. We think about how these documents will help protect our assets, but often times the discussion of assets is limited to real estate and bank accounts. Today I want to introduce you to something that is becoming an increasingly important part of estate planning but one that is just as often overlooked and that is protecting your digital assets.

Many of us have at least some online presence whether that be in the form of photos posted on facebook, songs or movies downloaded on ITunes, ebooks that are stored through Amazon’s kindle service, or even just personal emails in your Yahoo! or Gmail account. These forms of “property” can be considered part of your estate and an important question to ask is what happens to all of this “stuff” when you die?

The first thing to think about is who do you want to have access to this information upon your death? Two main issues arise when making this decision.  the first is that not many states have enacted any sort of law to deal with digital assets, only 5 have done so and Maryland is not one of them, which makes figuring out how to handle these situations even more difficult. The other issue is that each website has its own terms of service and any actions by an executor may be running afoul of that company’s terms of service. Different companies have different policies regarding what happens to an account after death and the only way to find out exactly what they are is to read the terms of service or contact the company directly.

The bottom line is that our digital assets are becoming an increasingly important part of who we are and as our web presence increases and grows with such things as drop box and even the emergence of digital currencies such as bitcoins, it will become increasingly important to plan on how give your executor or trustee access to these accounts after your death.

At Sinclair Prosser Law we often advise our clients to simply make note of all of their passwords and log in information for all of the various online services they use. This way their trustee, executor, or power of attorney agent can access whatever account they need to in order to protect whatever assets there may be. To go even further, you may include in your estate planning documents a letter to that person instructing them on exactly what to do for each “asset”, such as delete all of my emails, or my grandson can have all of my itunes music. There are a number of companies that can store this information for you, and we even offer to pay for one of those services for a year to our clients.

If you have concerns about your digital assets please meet with an estate planning attorney to make sure all of your concerns are addressed

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Jon J. Gasior, Estate Planning Attorney
Jon J. Gasior, Estate Planning Attorney
Attorney/Owner at Sinclair Prosser Gasior
His personal experience with family and the problems that resulted from their failure to create an estate plan resulted in his desire to learn more about this area of the law. From his work in the Elder Law Clinic, he further realized the need to plan not only for death, but also for incapacity during their lifetime.
Jon J. Gasior, Estate Planning Attorney
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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Annapolis, Asset Protection, Attorney Jon J. Gasior, Digital Assets, Estate Planning Attorney, estate planning attorneys, estate plans protecting digital assets, Jon J. Gasior, LLC, MD, SinclairProsser Law

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About Jon J. Gasior, Estate Planning Attorney

His personal experience with family and the problems that resulted from their failure to create an estate plan resulted in his desire to learn more about this area of the law. From his work in the Elder Law Clinic, he further realized the need to plan not only for death, but also for incapacity during their lifetime.

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September 3, 2020
    

We initiated estate planning following a presentation by Sinclair Prosser Attorney Jon Gasior. We were so impressed, we contracted with them to complete our estate planning. Subsequently, we assembled information on our assets and Sinclair Prosser Gasior did the rest. Correspondence was communicated to our financial institutions and the estate was established. We were very pleased with the courteous manner of the Sinclair Prosser Gasior staff. However, it was their professionalism that made us satisfied we chose this firm to handle our estate. We have nothing but praise for Sinclair Prosser Gasior .

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