Florida Estate Planning Lawyer Blog
John B. Conner has written a Law Review article in the Estate Planning and Community Property Law Journal titled “DIGITAL LIFE AFTER DEATH: THE ISSUE OF PLANNING FOR A PERSON’S DIGITAL ASSETS AFTER DEATH”
The article starts off discussing issues of digital assets and estate planning by defining digital assets and then discussing issues in estate planning created by digital assets.
It goes on to talk about how websites are dealing with digital assets and privacy acts as the relate to deceased users with social networking, web-based email, blogs and other online content.
Mr. Conner then give some suggestions for dealing with digital assets properly through planning, and some of the problems with using standard wills or other documents.
He then discusses post mortem identity theft and content theft from the deceased blogs and concludes that as the Internet continues to grow the need for estate planners who are able to deal with digital assets will continue to expand. Some state are attempting to implement legislation to help deal with these issues but those may only help if you die in one of those states.
I have recognized the need for planning for your digital death for several years and have been dealing with clients to design systems that will help provide for their digital death. If your current estate plan has not contemplated your digital death, perhaps you should talk with someone who understands how to deal with this unique class of assets.
While we have been saying this for years and it is the reason we created the original Gun Trust it is nice to see others in the legal community begin to recognize the difference and purpose in firearms trusts. Our trust are now designed for all firearms and not just NFA firearms.