What are digital assets? What happens to them when you die? Can you gain access to your deceased mother’s social media accounts? Can the personal representative of your boyfriend’s Florida estate gain access to your boyfriend’s email accounts? When I die, does Florida probate law protect my email and social media accounts? Are my email accounts and social media accounts part of my estate? Senate Bill 494 is finally able to provide some answers.
Digital Assets and Florida Probate Litigation
- What are digital assets?
- According to Senate Bill 494, digital assets are “an electronic record in which an individual has a right or interest.”
- What does this mean?
- Digital assets include your online accounts, such as email, social media and online banking.
- Digital assets also include any online rewards, websites, and files that you have stored in the cloud.
- Who has access to these things when a person dies?
- What if a deceased person did not mention digital assets in his or her Florida will or trust?
- This is an issue that Florida trust and estates litigators and Florida legislators have been struggling with for a while.
- As technology grows and continues to consume most aspects of people’s lives, the need for laws regarding it becomes more imperative.
- Now that people utilize “online only” bank accounts and save their most important information in the cloud, digital assets are very relevant to the probate process in Florida.
- Is this new legislation part of the Florida probate rules?
“Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act”
- Before this law was enacted, there was nothing to oversee digital assets in the probate process.
- No one could really gain access to your online accounts, making things very frustrating and difficult.
- Shouldn’t a personal representative be able to access information needed to carry out his or her duties?
- Without specification or access to your online accounts, how will your personal representative know what you intended to do with them?
- This new legislation, which was unanimously approved by the Senate and then signed by the Governor, allows people to choose who they would like to manage their digital assets after they die.
- According to a recent Florida Politics article, State Senator, Dororthy Hukill, said that “digital assets will now be part of our estate planning process and dealt with in the same way as our other valuable assets and property.”Want to learn more?
Read Senate Bill 494 by clicking here.
- User’s Guide for Florida Probate Litigation & Administration of Estates, Wils & Probates
- Want to know more about Florida probate litigation? Consider these free resources:
- Read the Florida Courts webpage on the probate process: http://www.flcourts.org/resources-and-services/family-courts/family-law-self-help-information/probate.stml
- Read the Florida Probate Code: http://www.floridabar.org/tfb/TFBLegalRes.nsf/
- Read the Florida Probate Rules: https://www.floridabar.org/tfb/TFBLegalRes.nsf/
- Here are the Rules Regulating the Florida Bar if you are interested in hiring a Florida probate litigation lawyer and want to know more about our ethical rules and our rules of conduct: http://www.floridabar.org/divexe/rrtfb.nsf/WContents?OpenView
- Here are the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure: http://www.floridabar.org/tfb/TFBLegalRes.nsf/
- Watch free Florida Trust, Probate & Guardianship videos, which include important topics of Florida estate, guardianship, attorneys fees, & trust law.
- There is no cost, no sign up, no one will ask you for your email address to see these dozens of free Florida probate videos: http://www.pankauskilawfirm.
com/Firm-Overview/FAQS.shtml