A recent article suggests that at some point there will be more dead Facebook users than live ones. That may or may not come to pass but it is worth giving some thought to what happens to your digital assets and social media profiles after you die.
Facebook have now launched their “legacy contact” feature in the UK. This allows Facebook users to appoint a “legacy contact” who will be permitted to administer the page after death – although the ability to write posts may be restricted to one post-death.
It is not clear as yet as to whether this feature helps when dealing with social media profiles or leads to more contentious issues if the legacy contact and the executor appointed under the Will are different and have dissimilar views.
What is important is to ensure you choose whom you wish to make the appropriate decisions regarding all aspects of your assets after you die by appointing an executor in your Will. This includes giving directions about dealing with all your online accounts.
Ideally, you should maintain a list (kept securely and not including passwords) of such online accounts and informing your executors where that list may be located. Executors are generally able deal with the relevant agencies directly as long as they are aware of the accounts.
It is also worth remembering that those left behind may well have very different ideas about whether profiles should be continued post-death, or not. Therefore, if an individual with a social media account provides instructions as to what they would wish happen on their death (via instructions in a Will) it may help avoid disagreement between family and friends at an already difficult time.
Further information is available on our previous piece here.
Some of the particular issues around social media profiles after death are highlighted in the recent BBC Future article referred to above, Facebook is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard.
Please contact one of our Private Client experts if you would like advice regarding this issue.
