Your estate plan should account for more than your home, bank accounts and other physical property. You may also have years of photos, important files, online accounts and other assets stored digitally, yet these often get overlooked. If something happens to you, your loved ones could struggle to determine what you wanted done with those accounts and files.
Fortunately, managing what happens to your digital assets through your estate plan isn’t that complicated. Here are the key ways to include them in your plan.
Identify the digital assets you want your plan to address
Start by making a list of the accounts and files that could require attention after your death. These can be:
- Online financial or payment accounts
- Digital photographs and stored files
- Email and social media accounts
- Websites or domain names
- Digitally stored documents
- Other relevant online accounts
Think beyond what holds monetary value. Photos, family records and other files may carry significant personal value even when they have no financial worth.
Set out your wishes for each digital asset
Your estate plan should explain what you want done with each important account or file. You might want certain content preserved for your family, while you may prefer to close or delete other accounts.
Texas law allows you to give directions about access to certain digital assets through an online tool or through documents such as a will, trust or power of attorney. This gives you an opportunity to communicate your wishes rather than leaving your family to guess what you would have wanted.
Give the right person authority to handle them
Choose someone you trust to handle your digital assets, but also check how each platform allows another person to access or manage your account after your death. Some services let you designate a trusted person through a feature designed for this purpose. This may be called a legacy account or something similar in your account’s settings.
Other platforms may not offer a similar feature or may not provide your login credentials to family members. In those cases, you may need to leave access instructions through a secure method while following the provider’s rules. Avoid assuming that a family member or executor can simply ask the company for your password after you die.
Texas law also provides procedures for certain fiduciaries to request access to digital assets, but those legal rights do not necessarily override a platform’s own security procedures. Consider both your estate-planning documents and each service’s account-management options when deciding how to provide access.
Make your digital estate part of the plan
Your digital life deserves the same thoughtful planning as your other property. After identifying what you have, recording your wishes and choosing someone to handle these matters, review your estate-planning documents to make sure they reflect your plans. An attorney can help you look over those documents and figure out what you should do to help your loved ones preserve your accounts.