It is important to recognize and identify digital assets in your estate planning.  Digital assets include digital files (stored through a cloud service or stored locally), websites, email, social media and other online accounts. You should consider preparing a current list of your online accounts and other digital assets to include with your estate planning documents. You should also consider providing your personal representatives (successor trustee, executor, DPOA agent) access to your passwords or the location of your passwords. The new Revised Uniform Access to Digital Assets Act also allows a user to authorize disclosure of digital assets through an online tool provided by the service provider.  You may also want to consider using programs that provide for online storage of digital passwords. There are a number of new online services being developed by the tech industry.
(Information for this blog comes from an article “Tips of the Trade – Planning for Digital Assets” by Thomas Shaver, Esq. found in California Trusts and Estates Quarterly, Vol. 23, Issue 2, 2017.)