Probate & Trust Law Section Conference Manual ... - Minnesota CLE

I. Advances in Technology and the Internet Have Changed The Way We Plan Our
Client’s Estates
a. Our clients have valuable digital assets that should be addressed in the estate
planning and administration process. For most clients, an estate plan that does not
address digital assets is no longer a complete estate plan.
b. Digital assets can be roughly defined as electronic content, information and/or
media and the right to use that content, information or media Includes:
i. Email Accounts
ii. Smartphones, tablets, netbooks and computers
iii. Online Sales Accounts (e.g., ebay, amazon, etsy)
iv. Online Purchasing Accounts (e.g., paypal)
v. Online Storage Accounts/ Cloud Storage Accounts
vi. Webpages
vii. Domain Names
viii. Blogs
ix. Social Networking Accounts (e.g., facebook, twitter, linked-in)
x. Intellectual Property Rights in Digital Assets
c. A digital asset can be the key to unlocking other assets with financial value.
i. Example: a decedent’s email account that contains bank and brokerage
statements.
ii. If the client received electronic statements and has no other evidence of
the existence of the account, the fiduciary may not discover the financial
account itself without access to the email account.
d. Digital assets themselves can also have financial value. For example:
i. Domain names can have tremendous value:
1. FB.com sold for $8.5 million in 2010; and
2. sex.com sold for $13 million in 2010 (after selling for $14 million
in 2006)
ii. Blogging can bring a client revenue and in many cases, should be treated
as a valuable business:
1. In November of 2011, The Atlantic reported that America’s top 10
most valuable blogs have an estimated aggregate value of $785
million.
2. The #1 most valuable blog in 2011 was gawker.com – valued at
$318 million (more then the next 5 combined) with $53.6 million
in ad revenue in 2010.
3. One stay-at-home mother’s parenting blog –dooce.com – generates
an estimated $4.8 million of ad revenue per year.
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