Planning for Your Digital Legacy
These days, so much of our lives are held in the nebulous digital “cloud.” Our emails, documents, photos, videos and calendars generally sit under one account. While estate planning typically focuses on assets such as real estate, tangible goods, financial accounts and life insurance, many of the kinds of mementos traditionally found in tangible goods such as paper notebooks, albums and planners are now online and controlled by large tech companies.
Understanding Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act
Michigan's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Public Act 59 of 2016) provides a legal framework to ensure that fiduciaries—such as executors, guardians, and trustees—can access and manage digital assets in accordance with the account holder’s wishes.
The law grants fiduciaries access to a deceased or incapacitated individual's digital assets, such as social media accounts, email, online banking, and cloud storage. However, this access is subject to limitations that respect the original account holder's privacy settings and explicit instructions. The Act recognizes three primary methods for determining access:
Online Tools: If a user has designated a fiduciary through an online platform's settings (e.g., Google’s Inactive Account Manager), this designation trumps provisions in a will or a trust. This may be the quickest and easiest way for a fiduciary to gain access to your online accounts, because they will not need to prove your death or incapacity beyond waiting the allotted number of days of inactivity to trigger the Inactive Account Manager permissions.
Legal Documents: A will, trust, or power of attorney can specify digital asset access rights. As a general rule, the estate planning documents I create include explicit powers to manage “digital assets.” This process may not always be straightforward since account custodians will require proof such as a copy of the will, a death certificate, letters of authority from the probate court, or a certificate of trust.
Service Agreements: If neither of the above applies, the terms of service agreements for individual accounts dictate access.
Planning for Your Digital Legacy
Michigan residents can take proactive steps to ensure their digital assets are handled according to their wishes by utilizing online tools to specify fiduciary preferences and including digital asset instructions in estate planning documents.
By planning ahead, individuals can make it easier for their loved ones to manage their digital legacy.
How to Set Up Digital Legacy Instructions for Your Google Account and Other Types of Digital Assets
I recently learned about Google’s “estate plan” and set up a plan to notify my designees (in this case, my spouse and brother) if I have not accessed my account in three months. They will then be able to log in and access my full Google account, which includes all of my passwords saved in Chrome, so that they can shut down subscriptions or access various online accounts as needed.
The steps for Google Inactive Account Manager are pretty simple:
When logged into Google, click on your icon in the top right corner and choose “Manage your Google Account” under your icon or photo. Then choose “Data & privacy” on the lefthand menu. From there, scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says “More Options” and choose “Make a plan for your digital legacy.” Or you can start here. You can then choose the details of your plan: who will have access to your accounts, what they can have access to, and under what circumstances. Fortunately, Google will remind you periodically to review your plan in case anything has changed.
If you use other platforms to store your information and passwords, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple or LastPass, you will need to follow their instructions to make a plan for your digital legacy. This also can be done on Facebook and other social media sites. The Digital Legacy Association is a Community Interest Company (similar to a non-profit) out of the United Kingdom that advises governments and individuals around the world about digital legacy planning. Their website provides comprehensive planning instructions for various types of digital assets, and they aren’t trying to sell any products!
As you work through your digital assets, keep a spreadsheet or document listing the contacts you’ve named for each site so that you can review it periodically and update them as necessary. If you have an estate planning portfolio, you should include this document in your portfolio as well.
Treetown Law is here to help you every step of the way. Please contact us today to get started!
