Published on All About Estates
By Demetre Vasilounis, June 4th, 2021
The estates and trusts world has taken notice of the importance of digital assets—there is no question about that. Now that we know that an individual’s digital assets are something that advisors and clients alike need to consider for every estate planning matter, the estates and trusts industry as a whole needs to start to thinking about how to best plan for those digital assets from a legal, financial and technical perspective.
Consider that many people’s digital and non-digital lives are very much intertwined.
This not only means, for example, that people tend to “do everything” from their phones (such as sending messages, listening to music and even tracking their health, among many other things), but also that their physical assets are very much connected to their digital assets (for instance, through banking or investing apps). This is also amplified by the fact that with each passing year, and each successive generation of people, people’s digital footprints are getting larger and larger, which in turn magnifies the role that digital assets play in one’s overall estate planning.
It’s no secret in any estate planning matter, communication is key, and the increasing relevance of this topic will only continue to beget an increasing need for communication.
I recently read Sharon Hartung’s novel Digital Executor: Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning, which is a deep exploration of these considerations. Sharon is an engineer who spent many years working for IBM, and I was drawn to her work through her first novel Your Digital Undertaker: Exploring Death in the Digital Age in Canada, which is all about taking an information technology-based project management approach to estate planning. While Your Digital Undertaker is a great book for anyone who is unfamiliar with estate planning, Digital Executor is more geared towards advisors who have only just begun to interact with the issues necessitated by digital assets.
Demetre Vasilounis, Private Client Services, Fasken
