Legal cartoons and humorous comment (c) Paul Brennan. All rights reserved.

I decided on 101 reasons as I didn’t want to depress the entire legal profession by having 1,001.
Paul Brennan, Lawyer, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

Death of social media

To manage your social media commitments when you have a business to run is difficult but when you are dead it becomes almost impossible. However, with the right social media strategy your Virtual Assistant in Mumbai will live on and continue to send out your posts at one o’clock in the morning and could even change your status to “PO” (“passed on”).

Your On-line assets e.g. photographs, videos etc. will pass in your Will as these digital assets are intellectual property. You do not need to name each item, unless you want to give the asset to a particular beneficiary; otherwise, your digital assets will be part of the residue of your estate. This could mean that the wrong beneficiary could inherit, so if an item is important or valuable (e.g. business logo, business website content) you could make specific provision in your Will.

Nowadays, people having so many Friends that they do not know from Adam, creates special challenges for the executors who feel that they must ensure that  friends are aware of your death and also that they have access to your profile to discover who you were. Therefore, the executors need quick access to secure, control and utilize your on-line information. Leaving a Digital Register of all your assets and passwords to access the assets would be useful, or even just a list of the passwords to your social media accounts, but as you cannot remember the passwords yourself, it is probably not going to happen.

If, executors are ready to do battle with privacy issues they can increase your likes but do not expect to attract many followers.

To paraphrase Johnny Carson - for three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but tweets taper off.

© Paul Brennan 2013. All rights reserved.


Sponsored by Brennans solicitors
 

No comments:

Post a Comment