New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog
While estate planning, it’s a good idea to make sure that various parties involved with your estate including personal representatives, agents appointed through a durable power of attorney, and trust receive the information they need to both access as well as manage your assets in case you end up incapacitated or pass away.
While most assets can be easily identified, one notable exception are digital assets, which include not just social media accounts and financial accounts but also cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and non fungible tokens. This article reviews some critical issues to consider in regards to estate planning and digital assets.
# 1 – Email and Social Media Accounts
Parties involved with your estate plans will only have access to your social media accounts, financial accounts, or email in case you end up incapacitated or pass away if you have properly granted them access either through estate planning or by properly using the terms of your accounts. Some estate plans include statements that grant an entity the ability to access these accounts. If you want to make sure that these entities have access to your estate planning documents, you should make sure to check the terms of your account in addition to vital documents in your estate plan.
# 2 – Private Keys
The only method for a personal representative to access cryptocurrency after you die or become incapacitated is through the use of a private key. In the absence of a private key, In the absence of a private key, your appointed fiduciaries will be unable to access your account or transfer cryptocurrency to the intended beneficiaries after you pass away. To make sure that your fiduciaries have access to private keys after you pass away or become incapacitated, you should consider giving the lawyer who helped you with estate planning a copy of the key or details of the key’s location. These details should be placed in a sealed envelope or another secure and secret manner to be held by the law firm along with copies of your estate planning documents.
Remember, your fiduciaries will be unable to access non fungible tokens (NFTs) without a private key or seed phrase that will be utilized to access the digital wallets in which NFTs are placed. If you own NFTs, you should give thought to where you store information. To make sure that your fiduciaries can access the key to your NFTs after you pass away or become incapacitated, you should give thought to transferring a copy of either it or details about its location in a sealed document that will be given to your estate planning lawyer.
# 3 – Trusts
If you own NFTs or cryptocurrency and want to make sure that your trustees hold onto these assets after you pass away, you should consider revising your trust to authorize the appropriate parties to hold onto these assets. As a result of the unsteady nature of these assets, many trustees are hesitant to hold onto these assets after a person passes away without receiving the explicit authority to do so in your trust.