Digital and Other Unusual Assets to Keep in Mind When Planning Your Estate
When you talk to an estate planner about your needs, you will often discuss elder law issues to care for your aging relatives and guardianship issues to care for your dependent children. But when you really start thinking about your estate, you begin to realize that you have some uncommon assets that you want addressed in your final wishes. As you make up your list of assets to discuss with your estate planner, you should also think outside the box and remember your unusual assets as well.
Your Digital Assets
Your digital assets include email addresses, online storage websites you use, social media accounts, and websites that you own. Why is it important to include these in your estate? Because upon your death, a hacker could access these assets and get one step closer to stealing your identity. If your identity is stolen after you pass away, your loved ones and your estate executor will find it very difficult to close out your bank accounts and transfer assets to beneficiaries.
Body Modifications
Do you have gold teeth? Did you know that the probate court is not going to automatically assume that those gold teeth go to your wife or other next of kin? What about any jewelry you wear as a piercing on your body? All of these need to be addressed in your estate to make sure that they are given to the person or persons to which you intended them to be given.
Sporting Items
One of the reasons it is so hard to get season tickets for the Green Bay Packers of the NFL is that fans who have season tickets often leave them to other family members in their wills. If you want your love for your favorite sports team to live on in your surviving family members, then you need to put those instructions into your estate. The same goes for your autographs and other sports treasures you hold dear.
Patents, Trademarks, And Copyrights
As with gold teeth, the probate courts in most states do not have any type of laws in place that automatically assign patents, trademarks, and copyrights to certain family members after you have passed on. If you have valuable copyrights to music or novels you have written, you must outline how you want those distributed after you have passed on in your estate plans.
Planning your estate can get complicated with guardianship needs and attention that needs to be paid to elder law issues. But it is often the items you forget to address that cause the most problems. As you prepare to talk to one of our estate planning lawyers, you should make a comprehensive list of all of your assets and be prepared to designate where they are to be distributed after you have passed on.