Wills, Medical Directives, Power of Attorneys, and Digital Estate Plans

Digital Estate Plans?

What is a digital estate plan? It is a plan for the management of your digital data ranging from financial information, to email, to social media content, to photo archives in the event you are no longer able to manage the data yourself. Developing your digital estate plan is another somber but very important task to prepare for your death and possible periods of temporary or prolonged incapacity. The creation of a digital estate plan is essential for the individuals handling your affairs and can be a valuable gift to future generations.

Unlike days of past when an individual would leave physical records of their life in a paper address book, letters, bank statements, and photo albums, our lives are increasingly digital. Digital contact systems have replaced address books, email has replaced letters, online statements have replaced paper statements, digital audio files have replaced record albums, Kindle devices and audio books have replaced the books on the bookcase, and online photo archives have replaced physical photo albums.

All very convenient. However, this convenience comes with a problem. The material is in accounts secured by passwords and optional two or dual factor authentication processes. Upon incapacity or death, our loved ones will not be able to access this information unless we think about our digital assets the same way we think about providing a list of and authorizing access to our financial assets via financial power of attorneys, wills, and trusts. When my mother passed away, we were able to look up phone numbers for distant relatives and friends in the address book that sat next to her favorite chair. When a cousin passed away, his sister was able to contact some of his close friends because she had the password to his phone and his phone account was still active.

As a producer of life story legacy videos that include important family photos, I am concerned about access barriers that will make it harder to pass along digital photos and associated stories to future generations.

What to do?

First, I recommend that you set up a password manager with the passwords for your online accounts. Second, you should consider setting up your major online media accounts such as Facebook, iCloud, and Google with options to allow designated individuals access to your account upon your incapacity or death. Third, you should create an archive of your important legacy photos that can be shared with current and future generations without the access restrictions of many online media services.

Password Managers

Security experts recommend using a password manager. You can have unique complex passwords for every account. The programs will auto fill your login information. Despite the threat of hacking the password manager service, security experts emphasize that passwords are encrypted and decrypted at the device level and the company servers do not have your password data. While I do not have the expertise to evaluate this analysis, I know a few individuals with IT security expertise and they are comfortable using password managers with dual factor authentication.

I like 1Password and Dashlane password managers. Both programs have an option to provide designated individuals with emergency access to your passwords after the number of days you specify. During that period you will be notified when they attempt to access your passwords. You can also create a family account and share certain passwords without the access delay. One issue to consider is whether access to the passwords is enough if accounts also have dual factor authentication that sends a secondary access code to the owner’s cellphone. This is another reason why the individual handling your affairs needs the PIN for your phone to allow dual factor authentication of account access requests including your password manager.

Online Service Legacy Options

Below is information about the legacy options for Apple, Google, and Facebook where many users store their photos.

Apple

Apple permits a designated legacy contact to access your iCloud information for a limited period of time.

How Legacy Contact and Digital Legacy works

Digital Legacy includes nearly all information synced or stored in iCloud that doesn’t require a device to access—that is, doesn’t rely on end-to-end encryption, which requires unlocking a device with a passcode, finger, or face. So you can retrieve photos and videos, contacts, calendar entries, email, device backups, notes, apps, messages (stored with Messages in iCloud), and iCloud Drive files. Payment methods, media purchases, in-app purchases, and iCloud Keychain items can’t be accessed. Apple provides a complete list.

Using Digital Legacy also disables Activation Lock on all devices registered to the Apple ID account. If someone didn’t leave passwords behind, Digital Legacy allows these devices to be securely erased and then reused—they can be sold, traded in, or given away. But their device-locked secrets remain preserved. MacWorld

Google

Inactive Account Manager is a way for users to share parts of their account data or notify someone if they’ve been inactive for a certain period of time. To set it up, go to your Inactive Account Manager page and click Start. You can designate individuals to be notified if Google is deactivating the account. Google

Facebook

You can choose to either appoint a legacy contact to look after your memorialized main profile or have your account permanently deleted from Facebook. A legacy contact is someone you choose to look after your main profile if it's memorialized after you've passed away. If you add a legacy contact, that person will be able to make decisions about your main profile once it is memorialized. Facebook

You should check Apple, Google, Facebook, and other online service websites for more detailed information and any new developments regarding legacy contacts.

Your Digital Estate Plan

You may want to periodically consult with your estate planning attorney to determine whether you need to update your formal estate documents to address this evolving area of digital asset management. I can only image how difficult it would be to step in to handle someone’s affairs during incapacity or death if all of their information is locked in unknown online accounts.

However, my focus is on the family legacy aspects of your digital estate plan. If you store your family photos on iCloud, Google Photos, or another service and you have not set up a way for others to access your account, the service will eventually delete the account and its content.

I encourage you to create a digital estate plan that includes saving and sharing important photographs with family and friends that is independent of your primary digital accounts.

You should locate, curate, archive, and share your most important family photos. Start with photos of your oldest ancestor and record what you have heard about them and work forward. Photos are an important part of your digital estate. Just as you should create records regarding your financial assets for the person who you designate to manage your affairs, you should create an organized digital asset archive to pass along to the next generation.

While few individuals have the financial resources to pass along multi-generational wealth, we all have personal stories and ancestor stories that will have enormous value to future generations. As I have written about previously, there is research that knowing their family history helps young people navigate the challenges of life. Your faith tradition may include gift giving during the the December holidays. While it will take an investment of your time, the sharing of a few curated photos of ancestors will be a marvelous gift for the entire family at anytime during the year.

You may want to consider a life story legacy video as a way to document your important family photos and stories. One of the first steps in creating a video is to collect important family photos for use in the video. I can assist you with the creation of a digital photo estate with DIY advice or more direct assistance. For more information, see the DIY page on my website that includes a link to Cathi Nelson’s excellent book, Photo Organizing Made Easy: Going from Overwhelmed to Overjoyed, on photo organizing. Feel free to contact me via the contact form on my website. I would be happy to schedule a time to talk with you.

Bryon