Bequeathing the Keys to Your Digital Afterlife

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By Anne Eisenberg

It's tough enough to write an ordinary will, deciding how to pass along worldly goods like your savings, your real estate and that treasured rocking chair from Aunt Martha in the living room. But you may want to provide for your virtual goods, too. Who gets the photographs and the e-mail stored online, the contents of a Facebook account, or that digital sword won in an online game? “Digital assets have value, sometimes sentimental, and sometimes commercial, just like a boxful of jewelry,” said John M. Riccione, a lawyer at Aronberg Goldgehn Davis & Garmisa in Chicago. [link]

Make a private list of all your user names and passwords for all the accounts in which you have a digital presence, and make sure you update the list if you change login information but don't put user names or passwords in the will. It is a public record after death. Other services include:  

• Google has a program called Inactive Account Manager, introduced in April.
• Accounts like this at SecureSafe, are free for up to 50 passwords
• Name an executor or agent can who contact Facebook and other social media sites, establish his or her authority to administer the estate, and request the contents of the account.