If you are online it is important you have a digital death plan(funeral).Another way to say it is to have a proper “Funeral for Your Digital Assets.”
Digital Assets need to be unlocked when someone dies
Notes Nathan Dosch, an attorney at the law firm of Neider & Boucher in Madison, WI, who specializes in estate planning for digital property and digital assets. “Our lawmakers certainly aren’t on the forefront of technical advances and the things we worry about.” As a result, without a plan, what may happen to any of your digital assets will largely depend on both the nature of the asset and where it is kept online, Dosch says.
A website domain name (URL) registered to you is a true asset that is transferable and passes with the residue of an estate, and your blog content firmly belongs to you under copyright law.
On the other hand, an online account with a website such as Facebook or YouTube or Flickr is not a true asset in a property sense; all you have is a license to use the site, and often transferability upon death is prohibited by the site’s “terms of service,” which is a binding contract, he explains. While by law you own all the photos and other content you generate, and the site has a non-exclusive license to use it, if your heirs can’t access your account, they can’t access your property.
Of particular importance is access to e-mail accounts. While in the past heirs discovered assets like bank accounts by finding statements in the mail, today many clues to such assets arrive via e-mail instead and, without such access, this difference could lead to assets being overlooked and therefore not properly listed in a probate scenario, he adds
Funeral industry|Funeral News| Digital Funeral Director, Funeral Blog by R. Brian Burkhardt, your funeral guy
