Tag: Jamie Patrick Hopkins

Protecting Your Digital Estate After Death

Protecting Your Digital Estate After Death

Eleanore

Estate law has roots that go back a thousand years into the British legal system, but the changes in technology are flipping these laws on their ear. The average American’s digital footprint is valued around $55,000, notes the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. The majority of people do not have a plan for their digital assets and the laws are too antiquated to handle the process. This lack of forethought leaves the deceased at risk of posthumous identity theft, loss of transferable assets, and digital fraud.

What Is A Digital Estate?

In the Science Technology Law Journal, researcher Jamie Patrick Hopkins defines a digital estate as anything that only exists in a binary form of numeric encoding. These include uploaded photographs, electronic documents, emails, and software. These are all potential intellectual properties that are floating around the Internet after death. Intellectual properties can be big money. A report by the National Bureau of Asian Research shows intellectual property fraud in the United States can exceed $300 million. Digital estates hold many of these intellectual properties, but the decedent often does not plan to secure and bequeath the property. Instead, these properties become part of an inadequate legal system.

Laws Governing Digital Property

Out of 50 states, 31 have no laws on the books that specifically govern digital estates, reports Everplans. Other states, like Delaware, have enacted legislation that allows fiduciary access to digital accounts. The implications of these laws are huge. Imagine a hotly contested inheritance between spouse and children. One claims there is a picture on the dead person’s phone that will prove the case. The states that have these new laws on the books will give legal status for people to get account passwords and information that would be the deciding factors in cases like this.

The National Conference Of Commissioners On Uniform State Laws is trying to codify this patchwork system throughout the states. It is called the Fiduciary Access To Digital Access Actand the draft gives guidelines on how the states will release digital information to attorneys, trustees, and beneficiaries of an estate.

Protecting Your Digital Estate

All estate planning has one rule: start when you are still alive. Yes, there is a certain amount of obviousness to the rule but the newness of digital laws makes this even more important. You no longer have the luxury of allowing the established laws to handle your estate. Include all of your intellectual and digital property in your will, including passwords. Internet security company LifeLock recommends changing your password often. This is good information for protecting your electronic assets, but make sure to give permission to access your accounts after your death.

Digital assets need to be enumerated in your will or trust. Some of the specifics need to include file names and descriptions of intellectual properties, account permissions, and image usage criteria. Also remember that wills are public record so a trust may be a safer way to transfer digital rights.

Viable Solutions to the Digital Estate Planning Dilemma: New Law Review Article

Viable Solutions to the Digital Estate Planning Dilemma: New Law Review Article

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Abstract: Countless persons are dying with out correct digital estate plans in place, leaving billions of dollars of belongings unaccounted for within the digital world. This is happening partly due to people are sometimes unaware that conventional property planning instruments and strategies, equivalent to wills, are ailing-outfitted to deal with the distinctive challenges of digital estate planning.  As a consequence, the vast majority of the Americans are vastly unprepared for the digital afterlife, unintentionally foregoing digital estate planning altogether and leaving their belongings trapped in digital purgatory.

With the continuing progress in our reliance on expertise, interplay by way of social media, digitization of particular person’s property, and additional development of recent Internet applied sciences, the quantity and worth of our digital belongings are rising exponentially. In response to this rapid want for digital estate planning and administration of digital belongings, some companies started to supply their customers the flexibility to plan for the disposition of their digital belongings upon their demise. However, because of the novelty of this space of legislation, the enterprise options presently afforded usually depart extra questions than solutions about what occurs to the person’s digital belongings, increase considerations about privateness and safety, and increase disputes over their total effectiveness within the property plan. This Essay examines the significance and growing prevalence of digital belongings, discusses the challenges going through conventional property planning within the rising world of digital property, and suggests a workable technique for the creation of a properly-developed and manageable digital estate plan.

Who will get your iTunes when you die?

Editorial voices from elsewhere

Eleanore

Dying within the digital age means leaving two worlds as a substitute of 1.

One is the bodily world, the place your physique resides. The different is the net world, the place your digital self exists. When you die, your family members turn out to be chargeable for each – but they’ve only a few instruments to take correct care of the net “you.”

This is a rising drawback nationally and in Oregon. Last week, a number one group of legal professionals beneficial that states undertake a number of proposals to make it simpler for surviving members of the family and executors of estates to realize entry to digital belongings once you die. This group, often called the Uniform Law Commission, says digital paperwork needs to be handled very like paper paperwork in a file cupboard. In most instances, a surviving beloved one or executor ought to get easy accessibility with out having to petition a choose or leap by way of months of hoops.

Digital privateness is rising as a scorching matter for the 2015 legislative session, and coping with the digital belongings of a deceased individual is more likely to be a part of the combination. Oregonians could discover themselves debating surreal questions resembling: How can we maintain a digital self out of authorized purgatory? How ought to we outline a superb digital death?

This would have seemed like gibberish 5 years in the past. Now, it’s a pure extension of residing with our heads – and an excellent a part of our souls – within the digital cloud.

Controlling your digital legacy

The State of Elder Law Scholarship: SSRN Articles

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  • Memento Mori: Death and Wills by Karen S. Sneddon Abstract: Death. The mere point out of the phrase sends shivers down the backbone or provokes a nervous giggle. Modern reactions to loss of life vary from avoidance, as proven by the abundance of dying euphemisms, to fascination, as proven by the quantity of films and tv exhibits centered on dying, together with Twilight’s vampires and The Walking Dead’s zombies. Estate planning is the authorized surroundings wherein an individual confronts his or her mortality and participates within the formulation of his or her legacy. Contextualizing the expertise as a memento mori expertise promotes the perform of the property planning course of, particularly the drafting of the Will. The Will is the doc that nominates the consultant of the testator and the guardians of the testator’s minor youngsters. The Will offers cherished mementos of a life lived. “Remember you have to die” prompts reflection and contemplation.
  • Health Care Spending and Financial Security after the Affordable Care Act by Allison T. Hoffman Abstract: Health insurance coverage has fallen notoriously quick of defending Americans from monetary insecurity attributable to well being care spending. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) tried to ameliorate this shortcoming by regulating medical insurance. The ACA provides a brand new coverage imaginative and prescient of how medical insurance will (and maybe ought to) serve to advertise monetary safety within the face of well being care spending. Yet, the ACA’s coverage imaginative and prescient applies in a different way amongst insured, primarily based on the sort of insurance coverage they’ve, leading to inconsistent varieties and ranges of monetary safety amongst Americans. To look at this image of inconsistent monetary safety, this Article affords a taxonomy to explain methods wherein medical health insurance regulation can promote monetary safety. It then makes use of this taxonomy to map the impact the ACA may have on the monetary safety of numerous insured populations. Specifically, it analyzes how a lot an individual ill would possibly spend out of pocket on well being care in three eventualities: an individual with common protection by a person-market medical insurance trade, a employee with employer-sponsored insurance coverage, and a retiree with Medicare and a supplemental insurance coverage plan. This evaluation reveals two results. First, the ACA alleviates monetary danger from well being care spending to some extent in all three eventualities. But, secondly, the ACA preserves (and will even exacerbate) variability within the diploma and kind of monetary threat remaining throughout the three eventualities. In impact, the ACA asserts and affirms totally different visions of the function of medical health insurance in selling monetary safety for various individuals. This inconsistency leaves some insured particularly susceptible to spending and creates complexity that will impede insured from comprehending these factors of vulnerability.
  • Contemporary Trusts and Estates – An Experiential Approach by Jerome Borison, Naomi Cahn, Susan N. Gary, & Paula A. Monopoli Abstract: In this essay in a particular challenge devoted to educating trusts and estates, the co-authors of Contemporary Trusts & Estates: An Experiential Approach (2nd. ed. Aspen 2014) mirror on how the instructing of trusts and estates can combine coverage, apply, doctrine, and centuries of custom. They describe the genesis of their downside-based mostly casebook and the affect of the Carnegie Report on their alternative of pedagogic framework. Each of the co-authors embraced the elemental rules advocated by the Carnegie Report, which counsels that authorized schooling ought to combine “theoretical and sensible authorized data and professional identification.” This essay goes on to stipulate how the guide incorporates an issue-primarily based methodology in addition to an progressive selection of ordering the chapters that tracks the chronological path of property planning, addressing the lifetime use of trusts first, adopted by points of will validity and interpretation. Drafting workout routines complement the issues in addition to conventional instances that illuminate concept and follow. With chapters on planning for incapacity, the federal property and present tax, property administration and charitable trusts in addition to primary doctrine on intestacy, wills and trusts, the ebook displays the up to date challenges addressed by trusts and estates attorneys. The co-authors have discovered that the guide’s modern strategy engages college students in a means that makes the research of trusts and estates related and college students observe-conscious.
  • Viable Solutions to the Digital Estate Planning Dilemma by Jamie Patrick Hopkins & Ilya A. Lipin Abstract: Countless persons are dying with out correct digital estate plans in place, leaving billions of dollars of belongings unaccounted for within the digital world. This is happening partially as a result of people are sometimes unaware that conventional property planning instruments and methods, comparable to wills, are ailing-geared up to deal with the distinctive challenges of digital estate planning. As a consequence, the bulk of Americans are vastly unprepared for his or her digital afterlife, unintentionally foregoing digital estate planning altogether and leaving their belongings trapped in a digital purgatory. With the continuing progress in our reliance on know-how, interplay by way of social media, digitization of particular person’s property, and additional development of new Internet applied sciences, the quantity and worth of our digital belongings are rising exponentially. In response to this instant want for digital estate planning and administration of digital belongings, some companies started to supply their customers the flexibility to plan for the disposition of their digital property upon their dying. However, as a result of novelty of this space of regulation, the enterprise options at present afforded typically go away extra questions than solutions about what occurs to the person’s digital property, increase considerations about privateness and safety, and increase disputes over their total effectiveness within the property plan. This Essay examines the significance and growing prevalence of digital property, discusses the challenges going through conventional property planning within the rising world of digital belongings, and suggests a workable technique for the creation of a properly-developed and manageable digital estate plan.
  • Who Said Learning Trusts & Estates Can’t Be Fun? by Gerry W. Beyer Abstract: From even earlier than their first day of regulation faculty, Texas Tech University School of Law college students have the chance to understand the significance of the property planning space and to know that it may be each an pleasing and rewarding space of regulation wherein to follow. During orientation, which takes place the week earlier than lessons begin, new college students take part in full-day applications centered on a selected space of observe both of their very own selecting or assigned by the administration. For the 2013 coming into class, I was in cost of two full-day Estate Planning Tracks with a complete of roughly thirty-5 getting into college students. As their authorized training continues, college students have further publicity, some necessary and a few non-compulsory, to property planning matters. In my first yr required Property course, I spend a number of days reviewing the fundamental rules of intestate succession and wills. Texas Tech then requires all college students to finish a 4-credit score introductory course entitled Wills and Trusts as a situation of commencement throughout their second or third yr. Students needing a extra subtle therapy might take programs equivalent to Estate Planning, Texas Estate Administration, Guardianship, Estate and Gift Tax, Elder Law, and Marital Property. Students can also compete for a coveted place as an editor for the Estate Planning and Community Property Law Journal that Texas Tech publishes. This Article reveals my fundamental instructing philosophy and the final pedagogical methods I make use of to make Trusts and Estates subjects each enjoyable and related. I will then share with you the precise instruments I use when educating the introductory course in addition to the superior programs comparable to Estate Planning and Texas Estate Administration. It is my hope that you simply could possibly achieve perception from my strategy to reinforce your individual instructing and the expertise you present to your college students.
  • Older Persons and Compromised Decisional Capacity: The Role of Public Policy in Defining and Developing Core Professional Competencies by Marshall S. Kapp Abstract: Issues regularly come up regarding the cognitive and emotional potential of older people to make sure legally important selections. In confronting these points, the skilled involvement of each attorneys and physicians (and different well being care professionals), performing each individually and collaboratively, is fascinating. This article describes the doable contributions of public coverage in growing, by fostering improvements in medical and authorized training, core competencies for physicians and attorneys which can be important to enhancing interprofessional collaboration on behalf of older people suspected of being compromised of their capacity to make sure important choices. Additionally, concepts are urged to handle sure points of the present coverage surroundings which will inhibit attorneys and physicians from optimum interprofessional interplay on this sphere.

 

Academic Articles and Papers

Academic Articles and Papers

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  • In 2013, an article titled: “Facebook after death: an evolving policy in a social network” by Damien McCallig was published.
  • In 2013, an article titled: “Coping Online with Loss: Implications for Offline Clinical Contexts” by Joanna Pawelczyk was published. Thank you Dr. Carmel Vaisman for sending me the link.
  • In May 2013, Maria Perrone’s article: “What Happens When we Die: Estate Planning of Digital Assets” was published.
  • In May 2013 an article by Jed R. Brubaker, Gillian R. Hayes, and Paul Dourish was published, titled: “Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning“.
  • A paper titled “Digital Afterlife: What Happens to Your Data When You Die?” was published in May 2013, by Stephen S. Wu.
  • In May 2013 a paper titled “Digital Estate Planning: Is Google Your Next Estate Planner?” was published, by Jamie Patrick Hopkins.
  • In April 2013, the paper “Afterlife in the Cloud: Managing a Digital Estate“, also by Jamie Patrick Hopkins, was published.
  • In February 2013 a paper titled “What happens to my Facebook profile when I die?” : Legal Issues Around Transmission of Digital Assets on Death” was published by Lilian Edwards and Edina Harbinja. Thank you Paul Golding for sending me the link.
  • Since September 2012, the article “There Isn’t Wifi in Heaven!” – Negotiating Visibility on Facebook Memorial Pages by Alice Marwick and Nicole B. Ellison is available online for free download. Thank you Dr. Carmel Vaisman for sending me this link.
  • In 2012, an article titled “Grief-Stricken in a Crowd: The Language of Bereavement and Distress in Social Media” was published, by Jed R. Brubaker, Funda Kivran-Swaine, Lee Taber and Gillian R. Hayes.
  • In 2011, the article “”We will never forget you [online]”: An Empirical Investigation of Post-mortem MySpace Comments” was published, by Jed R. Brubaker and Gillian R. Hayes.
  • In 2011, the article “Security and privacy considerations in digital death” was published by Michael E. Locasto, Michael Massimi and Peter J. DePasquale.
  • In 2010, Jed R. Brubaker and Janet Vertesi’s paper “Death and the Social Network “was published .
  • In 2008, the current term “Digital Legacy” was then referred to as “Digital Heirlooms” and an article titled: “On the Design of Technology Heirlooms” was published by David Kirk and Richard Banks.
If you come across any other papers or articles, please be so kind as to send me the link, so I could add them to the list (with credit to you, of course). Email: death.in.digital.era@gmail.com, Facebook page: Digital Dust.