How Can A Wills Lawyer In Midland Help Me With A Digital Legacy Matter?

People now spend considerable time of their day online and, by extension, a significant part of their lives. In different social media or other sites, people now put their literary efforts into poems, stories, opinions, and, in some cases, content that generates successful businesses. Like intellectual properties, a person should complete a wide-ranging digital legacy planning for these events.

Few people know that every content and piece of information falls under digital assets, and these assets have economic, sentimental, or value. Photographs might be fully sentimental, but a social media program may have a prosperous business involved with it. A blog or another online channel may still generate income via ads running on it long after the creator’s death. Likewise, any manuscript or a book draft saved on a cloud drive may be sentimentally and potentially valuable if it is published and then recognized.

Like real estate and material possessions, it becomes confusing for your heirs to know who, how, and what should be done with your digital assets if you pass away without any digital legacy planning. It is better to consult experienced legal personnel for the best arrangements.

What is A Digital Legacy?

Every digital information about a person or that an individual accesses or stores online or on hardware (like an external hard drive or a computer) will fall under digital legacy after that person dies. More precisely, all social media accounts, interactions, posts, files, online conversations, photos, videos, profiles, blogs, websites, and comments a person has left online or in electronic form will be considered their digital legacy.

Some of the item falling under digital legacy includes:

• Online gaming accounts.
• Blogs, online periodicals, and licensed domain names.
• Any audio file accounts and their contents.
• Social media accounts.
• Online shopping accounts like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
• Online accounts for utility and online retailer companies.
• Financial records in money transfer sites like PayPal and Venmo.
• Online cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin
• Photos, files, documents, and videos are stored electronically.

Your digital legality can be influenced by online content created originally by someone else when you interact with their blogs, posts, tweets, and articles. These exchanges also become a part of your digital legacy. It is better to consult the most experienced Midland lawyers for wills and know about them in detail.

The Control And Ownership Information

According to several wills lawyers in Midland, the ownership and control of digital legacies are confusing and often result in futile disputes – wasting both the clients’ and the courts’ resources. The commonest misunderstandings about different digital legacies are mentioned below:

• The extent of control over one’s digital legacies will depend on whether one owns that account (along with its content and information). For instance, if you post a photo on social media like Facebook, that platform owns it instead of the person posting it. So, an individual’s social media account usually terminates upon death, and its contents are not passed to their nominees.
• Suppose any digital content is protected by a trademark, copyright, or other protection, which means having ownership rights. In that case, it may be possible for the deceased person to pass the ownership rights to another person through their will. Still, contents created by a person and saved in an expired account will be lost forever if one doesn’t get access to it after the creator’s death.
• However, you can direct your will’s executors and leave instructions about the fate of the material in your digital legacy. For example, you can leave written permission and online credentials like usernames and passwords, allowing a favoured person to access and manage your bank accounts. Those persons will still not receive ownership rights but will be able to manage the accounts as per your instruction.

So, you plan to divide your digital legacy unambiguously to your favoured persons. In that case, hiring the most proficient counsellors of the best Midland lawyers for wills agency is better.

Different Digital Legacy Dispute Instances

Individuals’ digital legacy after death can come into dispute when the person who created their digital estate contents (the sum of their digital possessions stored online and electronically) or its subjects – passes away without clear instruction about its management.

Some of the known digital legacy differences are mentioned below:

• Differences of opinion about the ownership of copyrighted and otherwise protected materials.
• Problems over data that became inaccessible after the person owning the account died or the account expired.
• Disagreements over people gaining access to shopping or financial accounts associated with money transfers and the sale of products.
• View differences over the digital assets named in a will or the instructions for distribution.
• Identity stealing of the dead person or someone connected to them through an online account.
• Disagreements over the digital assets’ values that lead to differences of opinion about their distribution.

The executor can also be the source of disputes because of the following reasons:

• They willingly don’t obey the deceased person’s instructions mentioned in the will about distributing their digital assets. The surviving relatives or others interested in the digital assets might follow with legal action by experienced midland lawyers for wills.
• Moreover, people can go for criminal cases if the executor attempts to use the digital assets for their gain.

In cases where existing laws protect an account’s accessibility from everyone except the owner, even after death, the executor or legally permissible family members will fail to reach the digital content even if they produce the login credentials and written consent from the departed person. Therefore, you should always review the terms of services for any web-based platforms you use if you plan to leave your digital legacy to someone or protect it after your death.

How To Create A Digital Legacy Plan

Here are some fundamental steps to secure the fate of your digital legacy after death Perth:

• First, make a comprehensive list of your digital legacy’s scope and extent.
• Next, you must leave clear instructions about their fate – like which account to unsubscribe, which photo to download before deleting, etc.
• After that, you will need to decide and mention the policies for each digital asset account perceptibly.
• Finally, you will need to decide on your executor and legitimize the planning separately (as a will becomes a public document after a person’s death, it is unsafe to include info like Login ID and password).

Final Thoughts

Employing the best legal agencies to ensure the appropriate handling of digital assets through experienced digital legacy services is worthwhile. So, get in touch with an efficient wills lawyer who has the expertise and experience to extend support during such times.