Calling all Estate Professionals: This is an #EstateTech 911 alert!

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Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Sharon Hartung’s newest book “Digital Executor-Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning.” Sharon’s latest edition is a follow-up to her first publication, “Your Digital Undertaker-Exploring Death in the Digital Age in Canada.”

Reading through Sharon’s second book was like receiving a bucket of cold water right in the face, no….wait….it was like a fire hose; I could not drink up the information fast enough! Sharon is an absolute expert in her field, and the wealth of knowledge she shares is astounding. Every professional specializing in estates should read this book; honestly, it should probably be a course as well!

“A Digital life means a digital footprint and eventually a digital estate.”-Sharon Hartung

Everyone should expect to have some form of a digital estate. After 17 months of a global pandemic, I would be hard-pressed to find someone who has an absolute zero digital footprint. Zoom alone would cause you to at least have a toe in the digital waters. So what does this mean for us Estate Professionals? Is it finally time for us to look beyond boxes of paperwork to the vast skies of “the cloud”?

The time has passed, and I sound the alarm. As Estate Professionals, we MUST do more to prepare ourselves for the digital tsunami that is about to hit us. It is no longer “good enough” to ensure clients have Wills, tax plans, and financial projections. We must inform our clients of the digital estate horizon and what that will look like after death. Most clients will likely say, “What do I care? I am dead” If I had a dollar for every time I heard that comment….

We need to convey to clients what an estate looks like AFTER death so that they understand what the role of the Executor actually is. Being a Professional Executor, I am starting to feel the waves come in; I am sitting on a digital surfboard, and the waters are beginning to pick up some speed. The trickle of digital footprints and assets are already here, and we as an industry need to get ready for the wave before we crash right into it.

Sharon’s book “Digital Executor-Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning”is the first step to preparing for this unavoidable change. If you have not read it, I encourage you to order a copy immediately. You can buy a copy here.

In addition to preparing yourself by reading the book, I identified three “911” action items that Estate Professionals can do now to train their clients:

1. Create your own digital inventory listing-You can’t preach to the choir if you have not gone through the exercise yourself. Do you have all of your accounts listed out? Are you even aware of the online companies you have signed up with? How many loyalty point cards are at the back of your wallet holding accumulating unused points? Further to creating a digital estate inventory, Sharon suggests,“As with key physical assets, the client should highlight the digital assets of financial and sentimental value.” In this case, the client is you. I encourage you to go through this exercise thoroughly; then, you can understand the scope of what you are advising your clients to do.

2. Stop telling clients to share their passwords!-Sure, it seemed like a good idea at first, and to be honest, I had fallen victim to handing this advice out before I educated myself on how the whole system works (or actually doesn’t work!). However, sharing passwords is likely to infringe on any Terms of Service Agreements the client checked off when creating the account, causing more issues for the estate than initially intended. As Sharon says, “Password managers are for the living,” which means we need to ensure our clients understand what happens in death. We should encourage pre-planning accounts as much as possible, seek legal advice, and consider business accounts versus personal so that multiple users can be set up instead.

3. Make the digital wishes conversation the “new norm”-Sharon advises, “Encourage them to identify their top three digital assets that would have the greatest impact if they were lost or inaccessible.” Asking this question will cause clients to think about essential assets and naturally flows the conversation into digital estate planning. For example, perhaps the client will start by stating that Facebook is most important. However, once you drill down, it is actually their treasured photos, and those might be held on a cloud account that must be dealt with in an entirely different manner. Thus, encouraging a positive conversation on what is important to them digitally will impact the entire estate planning process.

Three action items hardly seem like enough to cover the wealth of information that is covered in “Digital Executor-Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning.” However, it is a start. Sharon has rung a warning bell for all Estate Professionals; the question now is will you answer the call to action?

This blog is not intended to be legal advice and should not be relied on as such. If you require legal advice, please contact a legal professional concerning your particular circumstances.


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