By: Kevin-Barry Henry, #1 Bestselling Author
Social Media has been a revolution for the last decade and a half and although that is not an incredibly long period of time, it does seem difficult to remember what life was like before it, or what we would do today if we didn’t have it.
So, what happens to your social media accounts after you die?
The short answer is… Nothing. They stay the same. So, I hope you really like your profile pic and your last post, because without a little forward planning, they could be there for the next fifty years or more.
It can be upsetting to friends and family when, while browsing, they come upon your account and your picture long after you are gone.
Every platform is different. but we will look at a few of the major social media outlets and see what you can do to make sure your online legacy is portrayed the way you would like it to, when you’re no longer here.
What about all the information on your computer or your phone? You take great pains to make sure your information is private now, but what happens to it after you die?
Ever since Bill Gates and Steve Jobs went to war in the 90’s to make sure every home had a computer, there has been a need to protect yourself from the cyber hacks that will happily take your money and even assume your identity. How does this apply to your estate plan? With social media and online your online presence there are a few things to be aware of.
Keith Masterman and Asho Sivearajah wrote in a 2017 article for advisor.ca that making sure you know where your digital footprint is can be very important for your estate plan.
“Digital assets are becoming increasingly important to Canadians, who have on average, digital assets worth $1,000 to $2,000 reveals a Deloitte report.”
According to the same report, Deloitte projects that by 2020, the average Canadian will have accumulated digital assets worth more than $10,000, but they are rarely included in wills or estate plans.
“Of Canadians aged 45 and older who say digital assets are important, 57% don’t have provisions for digital assets in their estate plans” finds the BMO Wealth Institute.
In today’s world, our phones and social media are never far away, and the information stored on them can be a gold mine to a hacker. We wouldn’t think twice about updating our firewall protection to make sure our online footprints are kept private now, but who does it after you die?
What is a digital asset anyway? Kimberly Whaley, principal at Whaley Estate Litigation, explains is simply a file that a person claims ownership of. It could be a photo, a spreadsheet, a Word document, a tweet or even a blog post.
Whaley further explains that digital assets (or accounts) often fall into one of three different categories:
- Real Money – Accounts where you can access real currency like PayPal, loyalty accounts and credit card accounts with cash back.
- Email and social media – Any account with personal or commercial interest, such as an email account and social media pages.
- Virtual Property. Any account that contains virtual property such as Kindle, iTunes etc, that you would use to keep your music or your books but you don’t actually own them.
Gone are the days when we can ignore these assets. If you don’t include a directive in your will, these assets could end up unclaimed, and that could make it look interesting to a hacker.
Even something as simple as an email account should be considered when you plan your estate, and especially if you use the account for business, or exchange funds. It is imperative that your estate plan include provisions for ownership of the account.
Without it, there could be headaches and unnecessary legal tangles trying to sort out your digital assets and accounts, not to mention the risk of exposing your digital accounts to hackers.
“…there’s the risk of identity theft after death if they leave accounts unattended,” says Marlena Pospiech, private wealth advisor at BMO Harris Private Banking.
There is a legislative gap in the application of the law as it relates to digital assets and social media, and without your help (by including instructions in your estate plan) your executor is likely to encounter roadblocks from the digital account providers because, for the time being at least, their terms of service agreements with you are a contract, and they won’t break it just because you died. So be warned.
You remember the terms of service agreements right? When you sign up for a social media account, the provider flashes up twelve pages of legal jargon and you cannot proceed until you agree to them. That is the contract I mean, and they are not all created equal. Providers differ from one another and it is important to know what will happen to your account when you are no longer here.
Gmail
Some providers like Gmail for example, will provide user content (your account) if the fiduciary (your executor) sends a copy of the death certificate, a copy of the email that authorizes the fiduciary and a court order. Sounds simple doesn’t it?
Facebook, on the other hand, will not give up access to your accounts to your executor, but the account can be deleted with a written request from the deceased’s next of kin.
There was a case in the United States in 2012, where two parents were forced to meet facebook in court. In this unfortunate story, a 21 year old man committed suicide. His devastated parents sought to gain control of his facebook account so they might try to better understand why he did it. Facebook did not hand over the account amid concerns about breaching their client’s ownership rights, and did not release the account information. The parents even got a court order attesting that they were heirs to their son’s estate, but facebook still refused to release his account information.
The story is very much the same in Canada. Canadian privacy laws are designed to protect a person’s right to privacy before and after death. So do your executor a favour and consider this in your plan.
What about your tweets? Well Twitter is a little more lenient because it will allow an immediate family member to present their ID and your death certificate to get your account deactivated. It will never grant them access to your account to continue posting, but Twitter will deactivate the account at your family member’s request with the proper certificate.
Pinterest is a little ahead of the curve because they have a process and an email account set up for just such a scenario. In the event that would like to deactivate the Pinterest account of a deceased person, simple email them at care@pinterest.com You will have to provide them with some information to ensure that the deactivation takes place.
Here is a quick list of what they will need:
- Your full name
- The full name and email address on this person’s account
- A link to the Pinterest account that you would like close. If you don’t know this, try searching for it on https://pinterest.com/all/
- Death Certificate
You will also need to prove that you are who you say you are so you will need to give them info about yourself and your relationship with the deceased so they can verify the information. For that you will need to be ready with
- Birth or marriage certificate
- Notarized proof of relation
- Your name in the obituary
Instagram also has a neat feature in that an immediate family member can report the account to be memorialized or removed from Instagram. For the account to be memorialized, they require you to contact them with proof of death, such as a link to an obituary or news article, to memorialize an account.
To remove the account entirely, they require an immediate family member to fill out the request to remove account form on their website and provide proof such as birth certificate, death certificate and they will also want proof of authority under local law that you are acting on behalf of the deceased person or their estate.
Linkedin also has a form you will need to fill out about the deceased person who’s account you would like to deactivate and it is available on their website.
You will also need the following familiar documentation to support the request:
- The member’s name
- The URL to their LinkedIn profile
- Your relationship to them
- Member’s email address
- Date they passed away
- Link to obituary
- Company they most recently worked at
Crypto-currency
And we haven’t even begun to touch on the recent crypto-currency markets. You need to have instructions to where your digital wallets and key code passwords are stored, or those assets will simply be lost for ever, floating in cyberspace. Don’t lose them!
So how do you do it? How do you include digital assets in your will?
Because there is little legislation to help your executor with your digital assets, there is no set rule that can unlock your accounts. You can help your executor enormously however, by including the following items in your estate plan:
- An inventory of your online accounts and digital assets
- Appoint a trustee (a person) in your will and authorize them to manage your digital accounts. This can be the executor, or someone different who is solely responsible for managing and closing your digital accounts, as long as it is recorded in the will.
- A password protected list of your accounts and digital assets that can be accessed by your executor and your appointed digital asset wizard. There are password storing services online that do this such as AssetLock, PassworBox and SecureSafe.
- Instructions about the distribution and handling of your accounts and assets in the estate plan so that your executor knows what to do with them once you’re gone.
- Put it all in your Estate Organizer.
Also keep in mind that digital assets are governed provincially, and the rules of each province could be different. I suspect laws in this area’s will continue to be formed in the coming years so that we will have rules we can look to for our planning. In the meantime, if you do these 5 things, your estate should be in good digits.
Do your best to make sure that your executor knows where to find all the information required and all the access and permissions, including supporting documents, in your Estate Organizer that I wrote an article about on this website here. You will be doing your executor and your family a huge favor. They will be working hard, as we’ve seen, to be doing you a huge favor in return after all!
With Gratitude,
Kevin-Barry Henry
To Buy my #1 Bestseller “Don’t Die Until You Do It!” Please visit here. Thank You.THIS ARTICLE IS PROVIDED AS A GENERAL SOURCE OF INFORMATION ONLY AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED TO BE PERSONAL INVESTMENT OR LEGAL ADVICE. READERS SHOULD CONSULT WITH THEIR FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVISOR TO ENSURE IT IS SUITABLE FOR THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES.