Be careful with your digital will

by | May 20, 2016 | Wills |

More and more, experts are suggesting that people create digital wills for the division of online assets. Much of this has to do with granting access to your accounts and ensuring that people can get into them after you pass away.

For example, perhaps you have an Amazon account with hundreds of digital books that you downloaded for Kindle. Maybe you have an iTunes accounts with thousands of songs. These things can represent thousands and thousands of dollars worth of assets that would have been passed along in physical form 20 years ago, but which are now exclusively online.

Other things that it is important to consider with a digital will include your email accounts, online banking accounts, photo sites, any websites that you own, online investment portfolios and the like. If you use a password on your computer, you may want to include that as well.

Now, one thing that experts do tell people who are creating these wills is that they need to be very, very careful with the documents. You’re listing out a lot of sensitive material that you don’t want anyone to have access to. If someone else got the will, you could be in danger of having your accounts hacked and your identity stolen.

In fact, this is one of the reasons people are nervous to make this type of will at all. Since it’s such a necessary document, you do want to make it, but you also want to store it in a very secure fashion.

Be sure you know all of the steps to take when drafting any will in New York, including a digital one.

Source: Next Avenue, “5 Steps to Creating Your Digital Estate Plan,” Catey Hill, accessed May 20, 2016