Ryan Wibberley is the Chief Executive Officer at CIC Wealth and shares with Forbes.com why You Should Have an Estate Plan For Your Facebook Account, here.
According to the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, "about a quarter of U.S. adults say they are ‘almost constantly’ online." The study went further to show that approximately 77% of Americans go online daily. As the internet has become more of a basic utility in our lives, our personal and financial information is stored online more than ever. We pay bills online, store photos of our families, and store contact and financial records digitally.
When it comes to planning for your estate, you should treat these digital assets in the same way you would treat your other valuable assets. With your digital assets, you really need make special arrangements in advance, so that the executor of your will can gain access to this information.
You should also provide the passwords of your computer and back-up hard drives to your executor, if you are storing your documents in this manner. Obviously if your executor can not access the computer, it's going to be difficult for them to access your important documents, without the help of a computer specialist.