Remember when:
- Local music stores were the only place to go for that favorite song played on the radio?
- You visited your local store to get that roll of film developed and had to wait a week before seeing if you captured a good shot?
Thanks to rapid technological advancements, what used to be commonplace is now a thing of the past. For many of us, the routine events described above have been rendered insignificant with the advancement of the Internet and everything it has to offer. Bills can be paid with the stroke of a few keys. Music can be purchased in a mouse-click. Photos from your smart phone or digital camera can be transferred to a digital account and shared with anyone who has an email address. What innovation!
We have all of these digital accounts that can make our lives easier and richer. But now the questions become: “How do I keep track of all of this?” and “What happens to all my stuff when I die?” To find the answer, we started with researching the question “Who owns my online stuff while I’m living?”
In this multi-part blog series, we’ll talk about ownership and transfer rights associated with bank accounts, music, email accounts, photos, and more, along with considerations for incorporating access to these important digital assets into your estate plan.
Bank Accounts
The Pew Internet & American Life Project recently revealed that 58% of Internet users engage in some form of online banking . Online banking is usually provided as a free service by banking institutions, and is used to easily transfer money, pay bills and keep an active eye on one’s accounts. However, when an online banking customer passes, certain steps need to be taken to make sure his or her accounts are handled appropriately.
According to Marcie Geffner at Bankrate.com, if a bank account isn’t held jointly or in a trust, this account becomes off limits to family or friends until the estate is settled in a court proceeding, If an individual’s family members try to use the account to pay bills or transfer money before his estate is legally settled, this is classified as forgery and fraud. Read Geffner’s full article here.
Music
It would be natural to think that, when you buy an album on iTunes, it’s yours to do as you please with it. This is the case for CDs, LPs, and books. Once finished with a CD or book, common law allows you to give it away or resell it. However, this is NOT the case for digital music. You cannot buy from iTunes without digitally accepting a user agreement which removes your legal right to “…redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer” your digital content. So basically, when you die, your music is supposed to be extinguished with you. For more information on this subject, please read some great research that Business Insider contributor Connor McKnight has done here.
In our next posting, we'll continue our coverage on digital assets and talk about key estate planning considerations. In the interim, we'd like to hear from you -- are your "digital assets" currently a part of your estate plan? What provisions do you have in place so that your family can access the information they need?
