Digital Assets…Locked Today, Open Tomorrow

We live in a digital world where just about everything in our life has some digital footprint. We have online accounts that require login and password information. These give us access to many different types of financial, personal, insurance, and other types of information. It has become a necessity to be “online” and connected via the internet.

With all this digital information that is accessible to anyone who has access to your accounts, it is no wonder people are worried about their identities and personal accounts. If someone else gains access to one of your digital accounts, it can potentially cause irreparable damage. And this can happen regardless of the type of account that is involved. It doesn’t have to be financial, although those are some of the most important accounts. Identity theft is also one of the bigger risks for many of us.

The account does not even need to be a financial account. Someone hacking into a social media account can also cause a lot of damage to your reputation and other personal aspects. For this reason, people often go to great lengths to secure their accounts as well as they can from anyone else gaining access to them.

But there’s another side to this issue…when you pass away. When you are gone, your loved ones need access to this information so these accounts can be handled and distributed. This creates a conflict that can be difficult to resolve if the executor can’t gain access to these accounts. In this case, it is critically important to have these accounts open after your passing.

There are three basic complications when it comes to planning for someone else to access your digital accounts after you pass away, as the New York Law Journal discusses in "Protecting Digital Assets in a Digital Age," including:

• Passwords — You probably do not want to give anyone else the passwords to your accounts today but allow access to them tomorrow. However, someone else will need them, after you pass away. Keeping them safe today and accessible tomorrow requires a solid plan.
• Encryption — Increasingly, many digital accounts have heavy encryption. Someone who knows how to work with encryption is, therefore, required to handle your accounts, after you pass away.
• Criminal Law — It is a federal crime (and a state level crime in most places) to obtain unauthorized access to someone's digital accounts. What often counts as “authorized” is determined by the terms of use of a website. In the absence of state laws that grant certain people access after you pass away, someone who accesses your accounts could be breaking the law. For this reason, it is important to talk to an estate planning attorney to make sure that does not happen.

It is more important today than ever to secure your digital accounts to avoid access from unwanted parties. It is also critically important to create a plan to give access to your executor or some other trusted loved one so they can access your accounts upon your passing. Your estate planning attorney should be able to help you create a plan to accomplish both.