In his article, Estate Planning 101: Don’t forget the Digital Assets, Eric McWhinnie points out the need to consider intangible property when creating your estate plan.
The internet is increasingly becoming the main storage of an individual’s financial life. A survey from Pew Research shows that 51% of American adults bank online and 32% bank using their mobile phones. Nine out of 10 Americans use the Internet.
“Digital assets hold both financial and sentimental value to family and friends that should be addressed in the estate planning process”, said James Lamm, an estate planning and tax attorney. “The first challenges are finding that person’s digital property and identifying which digital property is valuable or significant. Additional obstacles with digital property are passwords, encryption, computer crime law and data privacy laws. Any one of them can make it practically impossible to do anything with the digital property unless you’ve planned ahead.”
Consult your estate planning attorney for further information.