Do you pay bills online? How about banking, do you manage your bank accounts and brokerage accounts online? If you answer these questions in the affirmative you need to consider the digital portion of your estate plan.
While it is important to keep your sensitive access information secure on a day-to-day basis you do have to make this access available to the estate administrator that you select when you are putting an estate plan in place. For this reason you may want to appoint someone who is technologically savvy while being in possession of a good bit of business acumen.
The financial elements of estate planning in the digital age are going to be of primary importance. However, there are some lesser details to attend to as well.
Many people use Google as a search engine, but Google also provides a number of different services and most people utilize at least one of them. In addition to Google+ the company is behind YouTube, Picasa Web Albums, Gmail, Blogger, and other services.
What would you like to see happen to your Google accounts after you pass away? Would you like to see all this data washed away, or would you like to pass the data along to a trusted representative or representatives?
Google has now made it possible for you to make these plans in advance through the release of the Google Inactive Account Manager. You can access this tool through your Google account and create custom settings to state your preferences.
There’s lot to take into consideration when you are planning your estate, and the digital side of things is becoming more and more of a factor as technology continues to play an expanded role in our lives.
Larry Parman
Author, President and Founding Attorney
Parman & Easterday
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