Digital Estate planning is your way to make sure that your loved ones can access your estate plan and digital assets when a family member or friend passes away. Often people do not think to grant access to their accounts in the event of death nor do they leave behind login information, such as a username and password, to do so. In these instances, digital estate planning creates a process whereby authorized individuals can request access to digital assets.

Digital assets refer to any online accounts and any files stored on a person’s computer or the cloud (a server) and can be classified into two categories, online digital assets and offline (local) digital assets.

Online digital assets, that is, those that are protected by a username and password and/or contain economically or sentimentally valuable content, may include social media accounts, email accounts, cloud based photo storage/libraries, digital music/movies/books, cryptocurrency, online banking accounts, contact lists, travel accounts (such as airline miles or points) to name a few.

While offline or local digital assets are typically files that are stored locally on a phone, a computer or a tablet and may include valuable business documents, intellectual property, graphic design files and other types of valuable “digital data” that may have substantial intellectual property and economic value.

If your estate plan does not include your digital assets your heirs may not be able to gain access to after your death or incapacity.

Berry Moorman’s Michigan digital estate planning attorneys also provide a full range of estate planning services including:

• Wills
• Trusts
• Durable Powers of Attorney
• Patient Advocate Designations
• Living Wills
• Tax Planning
• Medicaid Planning
• Charitable Giving
• Probate Avoidance
• Dynasty Trusts
• Closely Held Business Planning
• Trust Funding
• Asset Protection
• IRAs including Payments to Trusts