What is Digital estate planning?
Digital estate planning assists you to accurately plan, organize, and document your digital assets or properties at a secured location so that they can be handed over to your designated decedents after your death. This helps you to plan and organize your digital assets and build last will in accordance with federal laws pertaining to digital assets management so that only authorized descendants have access to your assets without any chaos.
Why it matters to you?
Digital technology has empowered our lives, and it has become an essential thing in our life. It is estimated that 80% of Americans are internet users, 79% of Americans have a social networking profile, and 51% of adults do use internet banking. We cherish this digital revolution, as our digital technologies have primarily made our lives better and more connected. The impact is such that, like a societal life, we do have a digital life. We have a lot of digital assets, where we maintain a lot of our personal information online as it is easy to store and retrieve. Your documents can be the last will, the family will, insurance records, pictures, banking passwords, social media accounts, medical claims, investment information, immigration filings, website domains, email logins, and so on.
Digital estate planning is excellent, isn’t it? Yes, of course. But we all know that life is uncertain, and so our death, and what happens to our digital assets when we are no more? I am sure every one of us has some loved ones for us, be it wife, parents, children, siblings and so on. Is it not the responsibility of ours to plan something for our beloved ones and leave some good legacy?
Moreover, access to digital assets is not like a single login system, and each digital asset has different security access methods, like biometrics access, login password, or facial identification. So, it is not possible for our beloved ones to approach some authority and get all the assets with a single click.
In this digital age, we get all the bills or any information in the email materials. Without providing appropriate guidelines finding, compensating, and scrutinizing assets can be a tedious task for your authorized descendants or trustees. The digital environment is very vulnerable to attacks. There are chances of unauthorized individuals who may access your information, pretending to be your descendant with a false identity.
So, handing over your digital assets to your descendants securely after your death requires thorough planning, and this is where Digital estate planning can be handy to you.
It is estimated by Caring.com survey that 57% of U.S. adults do not currently have estate planning documents such as a will or living trust. Now that we know how critical it is to plan after our life, let us not be one among U.S adults who haven’t opted for digital estate planning. It is high time to make our beloved family’s life secure and happy even after our death, not only when we are alive.
