Digital Possessions & Inheritance
The current value of personal digital assets - £200
Recent research from Goldsmith’s College concludes half the adult population of the UK, has possessions stored on the internet and ‘cloud’ services. A significant minority store financial and legal documents on the web. More importantly, they consider these digital effects to be a part of their inheritance. This brings us to day inheritance planning indicator: 200.
Nearly a quarter of the survey sample believes they have assets in excess of £200 stored on the internet. The value attached to such assets is more sentimental than financial. As all things being equal it would take some time for the contents of ‘binary archives’ to inherited, [demography and mortality rates] – it would take some time for the concept of digital inheritance like the video will to be established. Nonetheless, it would be prudent to make the necessary provisions for the assignment of such assets in one’s will.
Digital Bequests & Inheritance
Several commentators have said things like ‘simply write a list of accounts and passwords’ and staple it to your will.
- Do not, under any circumstances, staple anything to your will.
- The advice from my geek friends is ‘change your passwords regularly’. Writing your password somewhere wouldn’t solve the problem.
The good news is that digital services are evolving. The bad news is that relatively few account holders have died [with the digital assets being bequeathed] so there is not, to my experience anything we would recognise as a protocol. Such ‘online assets’ could not be inherited any more than a bank or building society account could be inherited.
Death of the Digital Account Holder
Mrs Jones could not give her passbook or her bank PIN to her son. Her personal representatives would have to go through the process of closing the account and transferring the proceeds of the closure to her son. Likewise, while Mrs Jones might have left the online assets to her son – merely leaving the passwords to him wouldn’t quite do it, if you care to peruse the T&C of the service in question, most digital accounts are non transferable. The thing to do would be to apply to the account provider ebay, google, etc, informing them of the death and ask for the account to be closed and the contents transferred to her son.
Contact us for wills, and trusts advice and how to safeguard your inheritance.
