Article on Adoption of a Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Law

Jared Walker recently published an Article entitled, Return of the UFADAA: How Texas and Other States’ Adoption of the RUFADAA Can Change the Internet, 8 Est. Plan. & Community Prop. L.J., 577 (2016). Provided below is a summary of the Article:

With the creation of the first public internet network in 1991, the world has never been the same. With people tweeting, swiping, snapping, and posting constantly, the fact that Facebook users post on average more than 350 million new photos each day should not impress anyone. Digital assets have three characteristics that make proscribing personal property law to their inheritance difficult: (1) they are a recently new invention; (2) they are intangible; and (3) they have differing contractual rights based on state and federal law. Recently, state legislatures have been trying to propose legislation modeled after the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (UFADAA), the Privacy Expectations Afterlife and Choices Act (PEAC), and Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which regulate the rights of the company and a beneficiary to a deceased’s digital assets. Currently, a minority of states have adopted a strategy but most are actively debating the adoption of a fiduciary access to digital assets law.