When we think of the sentimental legacies we’ll leave our children, no longer will it be boxes of family photographs, handwritten diaries and our much loved CD collection.

With over 21 million UK households now having internet access and 67% of us ‘logging on’ each day we are increasingly living our lives online.

Our photograph albums, diaries and CDs have been replaced with online photo sharing websites, social media sites and music accounts either stored on a device or on a ‘cloud’.

However, our new digital lives could present a problem after we die. How do we pass these online items of our family history to the next generation and how are our online financial arrangements to be dealt with on death?

With new media presenting new difficulties for executors tasked with administering a person’s estate on death, it is becoming increasingly important that we consider the extent of our online life – both financial and sentimental – and include these digital assets in our overall estate plan.

We’ve asked Aileen Entwistle, an associate at Anderson Strathern Solicitors to explain what needs to be done to protect our digital legacy for future generations.

Financial arrangements

Whether it be every day banking, savings accounts, online investment portfolios and share trading accounts, online shopping or betting and gaming accounts, many of us have an online financial presence in one form or another. It is important to keep an up-to-date record of online accounts otherwise you run the risk of these potentially valuable accounts being overlooked when your estate is being wound up. But be careful – don’t leave a note of your PIN number or passwords as this is likely to breach the bank’s conditions. An executor accessing an online account using the deceased’s username and password could also be committing a criminal offence of ‘unauthorised access’ under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. It will be enough to simply leave a note of the bank and account number. An informal writing is preferable to leaving a legacy of specific accounts (or password details) in your Will as you can then keep your records current without having to continuously update your Will.

The process of dealing with online accounts after death is relatively simple. Financial institutions will typically require sight of a Death Certificate plus Confirmation from Court (depending upon the account’s value) to release information and funds. For Ebay or Paypal accounts, they will require a Death Certificate and Confirmation plus the executor’s ID before it will pay out funds. Ebay will close an account or Ebay shop, it will not transfer ownership and failure to complete an agreed transaction due to death could result in a legal liability on the estate.

For those operating a website for personal or business purposes, it is important to take legal advice in relation to the registration of the domain names and other associated Intellectual Property.  This will help to ensure the website can continue to operate and be maintained by the business or be left to the chosen beneficiary. 

Email and social media

Each digital service provider has a different procedure for closing a deceased’s account. They will request proof of death (Death Certificate and sometimes a link to a published obituary) as well as confirmation of the executor or family member’s relationship to the deceased user.

Facebook gives families two options: delete the profile or set up a memorial page. If memorialised, the user’s personal information will be removed, and no one can log on to the account, but the user’s wall will remain and existing friends and family can leave messages.

Twitter will close the account and help families to recover an archive of the user’s public tweets. In contrast, email providers are generally quite clear that they will honour the user’s privacy and not release any record of email exchanges without a court order.

Photos

Flickr had 6 billion images stored on it in 2011. It has a limited free service but requires a regular subscription to access all photos held on an account. If the account is inactive for 90 days, Flickr may close the account. Arrangements must be made for executors to keep paying for the subscription if they wish to keep the photographs. The simplest answer for photos is to keep a backup on memory card or CD. 

iTunes, Kindle

We don’t actually own the music in our iTunes accounts and our Kindle book collection, we only have a lifetime licence. The small print specifies that these rights terminate on death and are not transferable, even if we access our collection on a PC, device or Kindle which is owned or used by another family member. This could come as a shock to a user who has spent a considerable amount of money building up their music or book collection. If we want to pass on such items then we’ll need to start buying the tangible versions again.

Digital asset planning will only increase in importance as we continue to upload more of our life online. The law needs to catch up but, until then, plan your digital afterlife by keeping a running inventory of our accounts and passwords (including device passwords), ensuring it’s kept in a safe place. Back up your photographs and take legal advice if you have particularly valuable online assets. It’s also good planning to review your Will and grant a Power of Attorney as the problems surrounding access to your digital life aren’t confined to death but will also apply if you lose capacity. And finally, let your family know of the digital asset planning you have undertaken so that these valuable or sentimental assets aren’t ignored when you log off for good.