As more and more stuff “Goes Digital” or is stored in digital format, so it becomes important to manage all this Digital Information or, as we call it, Digital Estate Planning. We would do this also by creating an Estate Planning Checklist where we would jot down all our various digital assets in their various categories. Before we go into the details of how to do digital estate planning, let’s look at some of the different characteristics of digital assets:
The first is the monetary value: monetary values are those where a specific and realizable amount of money is held in some online account, for example PayPal, E-Bay or an online bank account, where the monies held can be directly transferred upon access.Then there are the trading values that are those wherein the value contained are not realizable as actual monies, but hold an inherent financial value, and these can be exchanged and transferred, for example iTunes or the Amazon Player.
The sentimental values are those specifically that are of a value and meaning to family and friends, comprising of photographs, videos, memories and relationships.These could be considered similar to a traditional photograph album, and are held on sites such Flickr and Facebook.