Digital Assets
Monday 31st October 2016
As technology develops, it is clear that many of us will acquire digital assets over the course of our lifetimes. These will include items on social networking sites, domain names, online gaming accounts, photo sharing accounts, online bank accounts etc. However, many of us may not have thought how these will all be dealt with if anything happened to us.
When a person dies, it can be very difficult to ascertain the extent of their estates by their Personal Representatives, this task can be further complicated if the deceased had digital assets and due to their concerns about security, privacy and identity protection they used a variety of user names and passwords in order protect these assets. However, the Personal Representatives do have a legal duty to administer the estate of the deceased including any digital assets and particularly financial ones.
Whilst it is important for everyone to make a Will, it is especially so for anyone that has any digital assets. You are then able to bequeath the proceeds of your online banks accounts/other digital assets to anyone that you wish to and ensure that your Personal Representatives are aware of these. We can assist you to prepare a ‘digital legacy’ to keep a record of all your digital assets together with a note of your usernames and passwords and these can be stored with your wills. These can then be updated at any time.
If you would like to discuss this article in further detail, please contact Ambreen Ahmed, on 01274 703 947 or at ambreen.ahmed@gordonsllp.com