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ESTATE PLANNING 3: Does your Estate Planning include Digital Assets?

More and more people are conducting personal business and their social life through online applications.  Email, banking, bill payment, investments, credit cards, social media and photo sharing are all types of digital assets.

Digital Assets and Estate Planning

Your personal representative will need to identify and have the authority to access, manage, copy, distribute, deactivate, and delete these digital assets.  It is important to incorporate digital assets in your estate planning documents.  A personal representative must have the ability to inventory and administer these digital assets.

Wills and Trusts

It is important to talk with your attorney about which documents will include your digital assets and who will be the personal representative handling these assets.  Your will or trust should include the authority to obtain, access, modify, control, and delete the passwords, encryption codes, and any other electronic credentials associated with the digital assets.

Identifying Digital Assets

Talk with your attorney about the best way to inventory your digital assets.  What type of devices and accounts should be inventoried and what it the best way to keep this information confidential?  There are online websites and apps that can store accounts, usernames, and passwords in one place.

Do You Have a Will or Trust? Does it include digital assets?

Aldrich Legal Services is pleased to assist you with your estate planning needs. We draft and review wills, trusts and other estate planning documents to help our clients.  We can review your estate planning documents to see if they include digital assets. We assist clients throughout southeast Michigan.

Contact Aldrich Legal Services

Speak to a Pro: (734) 404-3000

MICHIGAN REAL ESTATE 95: Property owners did not place a condition upon the delivery of the deed; rather, they delivered the deed to themselves.

When the delivery of a deed is contingent upon the happening of some future event, title to the subject property will not transfer to the grantee until the event has occurred. However, in this case A and J did not place a condition upon the delivery of the deed; rather, they delivered the deed to themselves, then deposited the deed with their attorney with the instruction to record the deed only upon the happening of a future event, thereby placing a condition only upon the recording of the deed.

MICHIGAN PROBATE 57: Brother granted permanent guardianship of siblings.

At a multiday hearing to address the extension of the guardianship, the eldest children, the mother’s relatives and friends, and school personnel testified regarding the mother’s care of the children, appellant’s treatment of and interaction with the children, and the eldest siblings’ role in aiding the mother to raise the children.

FAMILY LAW 88: The trial court found that the children did not have an established custodial environment with defendant because, before the separation, he did not have a large role in the children’s lives.

The trial court credited plaintiff’s testimony that, before the parties’ separation, defendant spent minimal time helping to care for the children, so its finding that the children would not have looked to defendant for guidance, discipline, the necessities of life, and parental comfort during that time was not against the great weight of the evidence.

REAL ESTATE 89: RM had not included any language in the deed providing that the property was a joint tenancy with full rights of survivorship, the property instead became a tenancy in common.

RM drafted the deed without seeking counsel and mistakenly believed that, if either she or FK died, the property would fully pass to the surviving tenant. FK’s will provided that if his wife predeceased him—which she did—the personal representative of his estate should sell any residual property that he owned and divide the cash proceeds equally among his surviving children.

FAMILY LAW 83: A trial court can terminate a parent’s rights and permit a stepparent to adopt a child.

A trial court has discretion to terminate a parent’s rights and permit a stepparent to adopt a child when the conditions of MCL 710.51(6) are met. MCL 710.51(6)(b) requires the petitioner to establish that the other parent had the ability to visit, contact, or communicate with the children, and substantially failed or neglected to do so for a period of two years.

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