MoneyDo: Make Sure Your Estate Plan Includes Your Digital Identity
Estate Planning in a Digital Age
You may already have an estate plan, (if you don’t, make sure you contact us to set one up) but your current plan might not reflect how you manage your life today.
More and more people are also paying expenses electronically. If something were to happen to you, would the executor of your estate know what bills need to be paid and when, or what accounts you have set-up to be automatically withdrawn?
Keeping a list of your online accounts will help in the administration of your estate and help keep costs down and the time frame of administration down.
The objective in creating these lists is to help your family during an emotional time when tasks need to be done.
What should you consider doing?
- Make a list on paper – or held in a secure digital area – of your online accounts, including any online sales, digital video, e-books, and music or photo accounts.
- Make sure your list is stored in the same secure place as your will and other estate planning documents
- Annex Wealth Management offers, as part of its services, a secure digital vault for valuable documents
- Include the information necessary to access the accounts
- Your executor can then terminate those accounts and the fees that may be associated with them, if needed
- Some accounts to consider: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, or eBay.
- In addition, you may want to direct and account for how your social media accounts – like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – will be managed. Without instruction and management, your account could be tagged in posts and photos you would rather not be.
- List your tablets, computers, cell phones or storage devices. These devices often have lots of personal information in them, so make sure you stipulate what you’d like done with them along with a description of them and where they are located.
- Every time you set up an account you usually check a box indicating that you have read the terms and conditions associated with that account. When setting up an estate plan for your digital accounts, make sure you review these terms and the rights associated with them, as they may restrict the rights of the users and those you would like to give access to.
