Creating your estate plan means having to take account of all the assets you own. While you might be focused on things like your home, you can’t neglect non-physical assets. These include things like your online bank accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage and cryptocurrency wallets, which are all part of your digital footprint.
Digital estate planning focuses on organizing these assets and ensuring that there’s someone assigned to receive and control these assets after you pass away. The challenge with doing this is that each platform may have different requirements.
Getting the digital assets prepared
The first thing you need to do is to take an inventory of your digital assets so you can assign each one to someone. You should include the username and password for each one, but that’s something you should keep somewhere safe until you pass away, so they can’t access your accounts while you’re living.
Once you have all the information recorded, you need to provide instructions for each one. This might include wanting the person to preserve the account, transfer it to themselves, use it as they see fit, or delete it.
In some cases, you may need to leave a legacy contact on specific platforms. Doing this while you’re setting up your estate plan ensures that you have everything in order for when you pass away. It will make it easier for your loved ones to gain access to the accounts if you follow each platform’s requirements.
Getting a comprehensive estate plan together can help to give you peace of mind, and it will help your loved ones to know your exact wishes when they’re handling your final affairs. Working with someone familiar with these matters can help you to learn about how to get everything set in the most appropriate manner.