Article on Preserving Digital Assets Under the UFADAA’s Removal of Privacy Protections

Elizabeth D. Barwick recently published an Article entitled, All Blogs Go to Heaven: Preserving Valuable Digital Assets Without the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act’s Removal of Third Party Privacy Protections, 50 Ga. L. Rev. 593 (2016). Provided below is a summary of the Article:

Part II of this Note will give a detailed overview of the existing and proposed laws governing access to a decedent’s digital assets, as well as the co-existing and often conflicting terms of service agreements and federal statutes, which the UFADAA purport to override. Part III will consider an alternative statutory scheme under which judges would have ex-post discretionary power to balance the privacy interests involved in each case with the need for access. Part IV will subject the hypothetical scenarios laid out above to the various statutory schemes in order to see how a balancing of interests might reveal whether the policies behind the current laws, as well as the UFADAA, are really being furthered by broad access.