Uniform Law Commission Helps Move Digital Asset Legislation

As I have previously discussed, privacy laws have made it difficult to access family membersdigital assets after death. Most of those assets are regulated by company serviceagreements. Recently, Virginia passed a law allowing parents to access socialaccounts such as Facebook. However, most states have not passed laws aboutdigital assets. In fact, only five states have enacted laws about digitalassets at all.

The Uniform Law Commission (ULC), helps normalize laws acrossstates. The ULC developed a committee dedicated to digital assets todevelop consistent laws and help bridge the gap with state probate laws. As aresult, several states have begun to draft digital asset laws. Some companiesare opposing this legislation because of their current users reliance onprivacy agreements. A survey conducted by a security software company asked3,000 people an average of their online assets. The average online asset worth was $55,000. Recently, I posted a revised version of my article, Estate Planning in the Digital Age that educates estates planning professionals on the importance for planning for the disposition of digital assets.

See Anne Hobson, The Digital Afterlife, Spectator.org, May 30, 2013.

Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.