By Leandri Spies, Fiduciary Regional Head and Remay Olivier - Fiduciary Product Manager
After your death, your digital footprints, usually comprising your online activities, accounts, and data will continue to exist unless actions are taken to delete or memorialize your accounts. The same goes for any digital assets owned by you. Digital assets can include any, social media accounts, e-mail accounts, online banking accounts, cryptocurrency, digital photos and documents.
By understanding the various types of digital assets and their importance, you can better manage and protect them throughout your life and ensure they are dealt with after your death, according to your wishes. The transfer of digital assets in an estate is important for several reasons, encompassing legal, financial, emotional, and practical considerations.
Planning ahead - Digital Assets and Estate Planning
The first consideration is that you can include specific instructions about your digital assets in your will. This will clarify who should manage and/or delete your accounts and how to access them. The appointed executor of your estate will need to manage your digital assets. This entails accessing accounts, closing them, or transferring them according to your wishes.
Access to your accounts, is not as straight forward as it sounds. Privacy protection and account access protection under South African law, is stringent. No person is permitted to access someone else's accounts without permission, as this can be viewed as a breach of privacy. Different platforms have specific policies regarding deceased users. Some allow for memorialization, while others may delete accounts upon request from family members. It's important to familiarize yourself with these policies. POPIA compliance in South Africa, governs the processing of personal information. After death, the handling of your personal data must continue to align with these regulations, which means your data can't be used without proper authorization. Thus, the lack of proper instructions, planning and consent can lead to your loved ones having to navigate legal restrictions to gain access.
Understanding the impact death has on the transfer of assets, as well as the associated tax and other administration costs, can be daunting. However, if the intention is adequately stipulated in a Will and the impact of the transfer of assets have been considered, this provides the foundation for a possible seamless transfer of the estate. Although conversations with an advisor or fiduciary specialist provides the necessary guidance, education hereon remains a constant drive due to a lack of comprehension of the implications at death. The evolution of digital capabilities which resulted in most of our actions performed on a digital device, created an additional element to the concept of "assets" and how we deal with these digital assets in our Wills.
Some key recommendations would include:
Instruction examples regarding accounts:
Be aware of the impact of digital assets are during the estate administration process. Always provide clear and detailed instructions to your nominated executor regarding the control of such assets.
FNB Fiduciary (Pty) Limited Registration Number 1986/003488/07- A subsidiary within the FirstRand Group of Companies. An Authorised Financial Services Provider.
