Go green and pay your bills online. Store digital photos in the cloud. Manage client lists on a spreadsheet or subscription contact service.
What will happen to those digital assets when you die?
People used to leave a paper trail of account statements, insurance records and treasured personal items such as photos and music recordings. Now it’s a jumble of digital data.
And instead of being stored in a lock box, electronic records are buried behind user names and passwords, protected by terms of service agreements that few people bother to read.
In February social media giant Facebook allowed its 1.4 billion users to add a “legacy contact,” a trusted friend who has permission to look after a Facebook page after the user’s death.
But an immortal social media presence is just the tip of the iceberg of the growing issue of managing one’s digital estate — the nuts and bolts of personal property built up over a life.
The average U.S. Internet consumer had digital assets valued at nearly $55,000 according to a 2011 survey by McAfee, Intel’s digital security arm.
A Harris Interactive poll found in 2013 that 93 percent of Americans who have digital assets were unaware or misinformed about what would happen to their digital assets upon death.
“People don’t get paper statements anymore. If they don’t leave a footprint, you have to turn into a detective to find out what their financial picture is,” said Ann E. Meilus of Barre, a lawyer who specializes in elder law and estate planning. Ms. Meilus also chairs the tax, trusts and estate section of the Worcester County Bar Association.
The generation of tech-savvy baby boomers, who are now approaching 70 at the older edge, is adding urgency to the need to plan for a digital afterlife.
Ms. Meilus said: “(Age) 70s and up don’t really live their life online. The 60-year-olds are usually one way or the other. Younger than that, more people are living their life online.”
Problems arise when an heir or representative of the person who set up an online account tries to gain access to that account. Sometimes the heir can’t even get into the account holder’s computer or smartphone to access stored documents.
Federal computer privacy laws written decades ago, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, prohibit unauthorized access to computers or to the contents of communication that is on a computing service without the owner’s consent.
State probate laws haven’t kept up with technology either. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only eight states — Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Virginia — have enacted laws addressing access to email, social media accounts or other electronically stored information upon a person’s death or incapacity. Nevada provides for the termination of a person’s social media accounts upon death.
State Rep. John V. Fernandes, D-Milford, is the lead sponsor on a bill filed this year, H. 1287, to allow reasonable access to a decedent’s email accounts. A similar bill and companion Senate bill No. 702, co-sponsored by state Sen. Michael O. Moore, D-Millbury, and others did not pass in the last legislative session.
Mr. Fernandes said that his bill, which has gained support over the years, was filed to address the inconsistency across email providers about who has access to accounts.
He said there is a greater national debate going on about access to all digital assets and he wanted to make sure that proposed solutions would be appropriate to the type of electronic information. For example, bank records also have to comply with banking regulations.
According to Mr. Fernandes, “The underlying question that is raised by hosting companies is, ‘Who owns this information?'”
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted a model Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act last year to remove barriers to a personal representative, trustee, conservator or designated agent to access electronic records.
In the meantime, even people who have been given power of attorney to act on another person’s behalf may still not be able to access electronic records if it’s not spelled out.
Ms. Meilus said not being able to access electronic accounts not only delays settling an estate after someone has died; it also has cost people by preventing them from preserving assets so they wouldn’t be tapped by the state for long-term care payments under MassHealth. In other words, people have had to pay privately – and expensively — for nursing home care because they had too many assets in their name to qualify for state aid.
Managing a parent’s records can be complicated even when only a portion of accounts are online.
Beckley Alley Gaudette, 55, of Upton, the youngest of five children, helped her oldest sister handle her 87-year-old father’s accounts when he died last summer.
“He got my sister onto his accounts a month or two before he died. He realized he wasn’t able to handle the checkbook anymore,” Ms. Gaudette said.
Her father was a retired business owner in Pennsylvania and had handled the financial decisions for the family.
While still an “old school” person who wrote checks by hand, Ms. Gaudette said, “He would check his account, he would check his investment portfolio online.”
She said, thankfully, he gave his daughters his login name and passwords so they could more readily see his financial status.
There were still surprises. “We discovered insurance policies we knew nothing about,” Ms. Gaudette said.
Negotiating Social Security benefits for her 86-year-old mother after her father died was also cumbersome because it couldn’t be handled by Ms. Gaudette or her sister online.
“It made me realize there are a lot of elderly people who are not getting the benefits they deserve because they can’t navigate the system,” she said. “She (her mother) was not able to do it on her own.”
Ms. Gaudette is grateful her father was finally able to have a family conversation about arrangements for his estate.
“As much as he was meticulous in setting this all up, he was also fiercely independent,” Ms. Gaudette said. “It was hard for him to share it with my sister and me.”
“I ask people when they’re older to keep a file or tell people where their passwords are located,” Ms. Meilus said. “I ask them to at least keep their financial institution information in a folder. At least give us some clue where to go.”
Worcester Register of Probate Stephanie Fattman said that judges in the Probate Court hadn’t yet seen digital estate claims, but she anticipated it would become an issue as the population that conducts more of their lives online ages.
Contact Susan Spencer at susan.spencer@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanSpencerTG.
Go green and pay your bills online. Store digital photos in the cloud. Manage client lists on a spreadsheet or subscription contact service.
What will happen to those digital assets when you die?
People used to leave a paper trail of account statements, insurance records and treasured personal items such as photos and music recordings. Now it's a jumble of digital data.
And instead of being stored in a lock box, electronic records are buried behind user names and passwords, protected by terms of service agreements that few people bother to read.
In February social media giant Facebook allowed its 1.4 billion users to add a "legacy contact," a trusted friend who has permission to look after a Facebook page after the user's death.
But an immortal social media presence is just the tip of the iceberg of the growing issue of managing one's digital estate — the nuts and bolts of personal property built up over a life.
The average U.S. Internet consumer had digital assets valued at nearly $55,000 according to a 2011 survey by McAfee, Intel's digital security arm.
A Harris Interactive poll found in 2013 that 93 percent of Americans who have digital assets were unaware or misinformed about what would happen to their digital assets upon death.
"People don't get paper statements anymore. If they don't leave a footprint, you have to turn into a detective to find out what their financial picture is," said Ann E. Meilus of Barre, a lawyer who specializes in elder law and estate planning. Ms. Meilus also chairs the tax, trusts and estate section of the Worcester County Bar Association.
The generation of tech-savvy baby boomers, who are now approaching 70 at the older edge, is adding urgency to the need to plan for a digital afterlife.
Ms. Meilus said: "(Age) 70s and up don't really live their life online. The 60-year-olds are usually one way or the other. Younger than that, more people are living their life online."
Problems arise when an heir or representative of the person who set up an online account tries to gain access to that account. Sometimes the heir can't even get into the account holder's computer or smartphone to access stored documents.
Federal computer privacy laws written decades ago, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, prohibit unauthorized access to computers or to the contents of communication that is on a computing service without the owner's consent.
State probate laws haven't kept up with technology either. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only eight states — Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Virginia — have enacted laws addressing access to email, social media accounts or other electronically stored information upon a person's death or incapacity. Nevada provides for the termination of a person's social media accounts upon death.
State Rep. John V. Fernandes, D-Milford, is the lead sponsor on a bill filed this year, H. 1287, to allow reasonable access to a decedent's email accounts. A similar bill and companion Senate bill No. 702, co-sponsored by state Sen. Michael O. Moore, D-Millbury, and others did not pass in the last legislative session.
Mr. Fernandes said that his bill, which has gained support over the years, was filed to address the inconsistency across email providers about who has access to accounts.
He said there is a greater national debate going on about access to all digital assets and he wanted to make sure that proposed solutions would be appropriate to the type of electronic information. For example, bank records also have to comply with banking regulations.
According to Mr. Fernandes, "The underlying question that is raised by hosting companies is, 'Who owns this information?'"
The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted a model Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act last year to remove barriers to a personal representative, trustee, conservator or designated agent to access electronic records.
In the meantime, even people who have been given power of attorney to act on another person's behalf may still not be able to access electronic records if it's not spelled out.
Ms. Meilus said not being able to access electronic accounts not only delays settling an estate after someone has died; it also has cost people by preventing them from preserving assets so they wouldn't be tapped by the state for long-term care payments under MassHealth. In other words, people have had to pay privately – and expensively — for nursing home care because they had too many assets in their name to qualify for state aid.
Managing a parent's records can be complicated even when only a portion of accounts are online.
Beckley Alley Gaudette, 55, of Upton, the youngest of five children, helped her oldest sister handle her 87-year-old father's accounts when he died last summer.
"He got my sister onto his accounts a month or two before he died. He realized he wasn't able to handle the checkbook anymore," Ms. Gaudette said.
Her father was a retired business owner in Pennsylvania and had handled the financial decisions for the family.
While still an "old school" person who wrote checks by hand, Ms. Gaudette said, "He would check his account, he would check his investment portfolio online."
She said, thankfully, he gave his daughters his login name and passwords so they could more readily see his financial status.
There were still surprises. "We discovered insurance policies we knew nothing about," Ms. Gaudette said.
Negotiating Social Security benefits for her 86-year-old mother after her father died was also cumbersome because it couldn't be handled by Ms. Gaudette or her sister online.
"It made me realize there are a lot of elderly people who are not getting the benefits they deserve because they can't navigate the system," she said. "She (her mother) was not able to do it on her own."
Ms. Gaudette is grateful her father was finally able to have a family conversation about arrangements for his estate.
"As much as he was meticulous in setting this all up, he was also fiercely independent," Ms. Gaudette said. "It was hard for him to share it with my sister and me."
"I ask people when they're older to keep a file or tell people where their passwords are located," Ms. Meilus said. "I ask them to at least keep their financial institution information in a folder. At least give us some clue where to go."
Worcester Register of Probate Stephanie Fattman said that judges in the Probate Court hadn't yet seen digital estate claims, but she anticipated it would become an issue as the population that conducts more of their lives online ages.
Contact Susan Spencer at susan.spencer@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanSpencerTG.
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