For Cary wills and estate lawyers like me, estate planning means so much more than just avoiding taxes and planning for death. Instead, it’s about preserving your “whole family legacy,” which includes family values, traditions and memories should something unexpectedly happen to you.
To that end, your memories are priceless treasures that you’ve spent a lifetime trying to preserve. Years ago it was the shoe box of pictures under the bed or the trunk in the attic, but in today’s tech-savvy world social media has taken their place.
More and more people are using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to record important memories such as the birth of a baby, a child’s graduation, a wedding and so much more. And what makes this option so special is that it allows the owner of the social media account, along with friends and family to post comments and other valuable insights on each post.
Social media accounts serve as a cache for photos and videos – all of which are incredibly valuable to your family. Doesn’t it make sense, then, that you include a plan to preserve the memories hosted on your social media accounts along with the rest of your family’s legacy? Even though we are still at the dawn of what social media will become, the major social media platforms are already beginning to address the issue of how to handle social media accounts when the owner passes away. Here are a few examples:
Twitter recently adopted a policy to handle ownership of a deceased user’s account. Twitter requires the following information:
- Your full name, contact information (including e-mail address), and your relationship to the deceased user.
- The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.
- A link to a public obituary or news article.
Once you provide Twitter with these three things, you can either request that the deceased user’s account be deleted or receive an archive of all of the deceased user’s tweets offline.
Facebook has a unique feature where they will memorialize the profile of a deceased account holder. When a profile is memorialized, only current “friends” will be able to see it. It is however, still active so that friends can leave messages on the wall in remembrance.
To have someone’s profile memorialized, just click this link and you’ll be able to submit a request. You can also request that the decedent’s account be deleted using this form.
LinkedIn has a simple Verification of Death form, which is easy to complete. You can find this form and the information required to close the account on the LinkedIn Customer Support Center. You can opt to submit the form either online or via fax. You will need to know the account holder’s email address used on the account. This is what is used to verify the person’s identity.
As with all other aspects of estate planning, it is important to discuss what you want to happen to your online profiles with your Cary wills and estates lawyer and document your wishes in writing. Call us today at (919) 443-3035 to schedule a Vision Meeting to discuss your planning goals.