What Your Will Should Say About Your Digital Assets

Do the wills you are drafting for your clients deal with their digital assets? Does your will deal with your digital assets (personally and for your practice)? I’m guessing that your answers to both these questions is “No.”

My good friend Sharon Nelson did an excellent post on this hot topic on the Ride The Lightning blog. Until recently, lawyers just didn’t think about digital assets. This needs to change as lawyers and clients alike all have significant and growing online presences. It can be very difficult and time consuming for family members and estate trustees to deal with digital assets if they don’t know of them or don’t have the necessary usernames and passwords to access them.

Sharon (and her husband John) recently redid their wills and they have generously posted the language they came up with for their wills and Powers of Attorney. If you haven’t thought about this important issue for your will or the wills you are doing for your clients, please review the provisions that Sharon has posted and consider incorporating an appropriate adaptation of them in the wills and powers of attorney you are drafting.

Comments

  1. Sharon and John’s precedent could be very helpful. For a longer review of the legal and practical issues, see my recent technology law column from February.