Who Inherits Your Instagram
Who Inherits Your Instagram
For most of history, estate planning was concerned with tangible things. Houses. Jewelry. Bank accounts. Family businesses. The things people could see and touch.
Today, many of us have something our grandparents never imagined: entire lives that exist online.
Our photographs are stored in the cloud. Our friendships are documented on Facebook. Some people earn a living through YouTube channels, podcasts, Etsy stores, or thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok. Others hold cryptocurrency worth substantial sums. Yet surprisingly few people have considered what happens to these assets when they are gone.
Recent headlines involving celebrities, influencers, and ordinary families alike have highlighted an uncomfortable reality. Access to a digital life does not automatically pass to loved ones. A surviving spouse may know every detail about a person's life and still find themselves unable to retrieve photographs, access online accounts, or manage digital businesses.
Technology companies have their own policies. Passwords die with the owner. Privacy laws can create additional barriers. Even family members with the best intentions may discover that love and good intentions are no substitute for legal authority.
The issue is not limited to social media. Increasingly, people maintain substantial wealth and valuable property online. Cryptocurrency wallets, online storefronts, reward points, digital photographs, subscription accounts, and intellectual property can all become difficult to locate or impossible to access if no plan exists.
What makes these situations especially heartbreaking is that they are largely preventable. Most families do not end up in court because someone was wealthy. They end up in court because someone assumed that the people closest to them would simply "figure it out."
Unfortunately, the law rarely rewards assumptions.
Estate planning has always been about more than money. At its core, it is an exercise in making life easier for the people we love. Fifty years ago that meant making sure someone could access the family home or a checking account. Today, it may also mean ensuring that a spouse can retrieve twenty years of photographs, preserve an online business, or gain access to a cryptocurrency wallet.
The question families should be asking is no longer, "Who gets the house?"
It may be:
"Who gets my digital life?"
And perhaps more importantly:
Will they be able to access it at all?