Can I Create a Digital Estate Plan for My Business?
When composing your estate planning documents, it may be easy to account for your tangible assets; that is, the ones that you can see, touch, and possibly use every day. However, many people forget to incorporate their intangible assets into their plans, as well. Meaning that they forget to create a digital estate plan, whether it be for their personal or business assets. Continue reading to learn how to create a digital estate plan for your business and how one of the experienced Butler County estate planning & probate attorneys at Heritage Elder Law & Estate Planning, LLC can work to ensure no business asset goes unnoticed.
What is a digital estate plan?
First of all, you must understand what a digital estate plan is. Simply put, this plan covers all your digital assets, which are considered all online records that you may own. Such online records do not necessarily need to hold financial value. Rather, they may simply have sentimental value that you wish for your beneficiaries to keep close. For your personal estate, examples of such digital assets are as follows:
- Your digital financial assets (i.e., online bank accounts, online payment services, etc).
- Your digital audiovisual collection (i.e., digital photos, videos, audio files, etc).
- Your digital rewards programs (i.e., credit card points, store points, etc).
- Your social media accounts (i.e., digital media collections, direct message conversations, etc).
Am I also able to create a digital estate plan for my business?
As you may already know, as a business owner, you must work on a business estate plan in addition to your personal estate plan. With that, it is wise to have your business estate plan include your digital business assets. Arguably the most critical business digital assets that you must protect are your intellectual properties. Examples are as follows:
- Digital files of your business’s logo and brand name.
- Digital files related to your business’s copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
- Digital files of your business’s photo and video advertisement campaigns.
- Digital files of your business’s slide presentations for conferences or shareholder meetings.
- Digital files of your business’s spreadsheets for budget plans or data collection.
- Your business’s online website and social media accounts.
Similar to your personal digital assets, your business digital assets do not necessarily need to be worth any monetary value. For example, you may consider one of your assets to be the long-term goals you have for your business. Therefore, you may use your digital estate plan to assign certain individuals to carry out these goals when you are, unfortunately, no longer around.
In conclusion, we believe that legal advice from one of the skilled Butler County estate planning attorneys is the best fit for you and your business’s digital estate plan. So please get in touch with Heritage Elder Law & Estate Planning, LLC as soon as possible.
