Making an inventory of your assets is generally one of the first steps people take when they are doing estate planning. They simply need to go over everything that they own, possibly dividing things into categories like financial assets, family heirlooms and other tangible assets.
While you do that, you may also find that you have a significant amount of digital assets. This could include things like digital movie collections, game collections and music collections. Some people have invested thousands of dollars in building up these collections over the years, and they want to know if they can pass them down in their estate plans.
The terms and conditions matter a great deal
This may work, but it may not, and the key lies in checking the terms and conditions of that account.
In many cases, these terms are written up so that you do not purchase those digital assets at all. You pay the company that owns the asset for a license. They will then allow you to watch a movie or stream a song whenever you want, making it feel as if you own that file. But since you do not actually have ownership and you are not allowed to transfer your license, there is no way to include this type of digital asset in an estate plan.
Planning in the future
Digital assets are getting to be more common, and even include things like cryptocurrency accounts in the modern era. It is very important to keep an eye on how these types of changes and developments impact estate planning moving forward. You need to know exactly what steps to take to create an estate plan that really works for your needs.