When making a Will the most obvious things to consider are your physical assets – your house, money, car etc.

However in recent years the problem of what to do with your “digital assets” once you’ve died can easily be overlooked.

Having a paper free existence online may seem convenient, but Executors are faced with a difficult task when left without login details. Your Executors need to know what your digital assets are, how to access and deal with them and how, if necessary, to value them.

Digital assets can broadly be divided into three main categories:

• Digital assets with financial worth e.g. online businesses or online-only bank accounts.*
• Digital assets with sentimental value e.g. photographs stored online or on a hard drive.
• Digital assets which divulge personal information e.g. social media accounts which give name, date of birth and address details.

Digital legacies can be extremely valuable in both monetary and sentimental terms, however many are lost or rendered inaccessible/unusable, as loved-ones are unable to access them without the login details.

Recently larger companies have been seeking to address this issue: Google’s launch of Inactive Account Manager allows users to automate how their account is dealt with after their death. However this may not be an effective means of passing account details on to Executors as the process can take up to a year after you “last log on” to send the relevant details.

Finally although a number of “digital legacy” companies have been established, storing vast amounts of private and secure information in one place online is an incredibly insecure method of passing on digital assets – if this one password is compromised a hacker would have access to your entire digital estate.

The starting point is to consider which parts of your digital estate you wish to be passed on and who you wish to have access to them – many would not want every member of family to be able to pick through their private emails. You then need to consider a safe place where you can keep details for these accounts so that they cannot be accessed by others until needed by executors.

Rosalind Watchorn Solicitors Sheffield are experts in Wills & Probate. If you are looking to write a Will – or update an existing one – contact us today to discuss your situation in a free initial consultation with a member of our wills team.

*It should be noted that bank accounts should not be accessed after the death of the account holder, however executors should be informed of their existence.