This fascinating article explains the importance of leaving your critical
information in a safe place to be picked up by your loved ones after you have passed
away. However, there is a new twist. We are all aware of how important
it is to communicate bank account numbers, life insurance policy numbers and other
key messages, but what about all of your passwords for email accounts, PayPal accounts
and other online information? Using the MyMessages™ service at LegalWills.ca
is an ideal way to document this kind of information which should not be included
in your Will, as it is a legal document that would have to be updated, signed and
witnessed every time a change is made. When loved ones do not have access
to this information, a number of issues can arise...
Digital Inheritance Raises
Legal Questions
January 5, 2005
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- As more of our personal lives go digital,
family members, estate attorneys and online service providers are increasingly grappling
with what happens to those information bits when their owners die.
Sometimes, the question involves e-mail sitting on a distant
server; other times, it's about the photos or financial records stored on a password-protected
computer.
This week, a Michigan man publicized his struggle to access
the Yahoo e-mail account belonging to his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Justin M. Ellsworth,
20, who was killed November 13 in Iraq. Though Yahoo's policies state that accounts
"terminate upon your death," John Ellsworth said his son would have wanted to give
him access.
"He was wanting to forward his e-mail from strangers," Ellsworth
said. "They were letters of encouragement. He said all their support kept him motivated.
We've talked back and forth about how we were going to print them out and put them
in a scrapbook."
To release those messages in such circumstances, Yahoo said,
would violate the privacy rights of the deceased and those with whom they've corresponded.
"The commitment we've made to every person who signs-up for
a Yahoo! Mail account is to treat their email as a private communication and to
treat the content of their messages as confidential," spokeswoman Mary Osako said
in a statement.
But Osako said the company was dealing with uncharted territory and was willing
to continue discussions with Ellsworth. One option could involve Ellsworth getting
a court order, which Yahoo would abide. Ellsworth said he preferred to avoid litigation.
Other service providers, including America Online Inc., EarthLink Inc. and Microsoft
Corp., which runs Hotmail, have provisions for transferring accounts upon proof
of death and identity as next of kin.
AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company gets dozens
of such requests a day and has a separate fax number, mailing address and full-time
service representative devoted to fulfillment.
Nonetheless, some privacy advocates question whether that's
a good approach.
"People might decide what they want family members to see or
keep secret sometimes for family harmony reasons," said Peter Swire, an Ohio State
University law professor who served as former President Bill Clinton's chief privacy
counselor. "They may know secrets of other family members that they hold in confidence:
The sister had an abortion; the father had a first marriage."
Swire said Yahoo's policies are stricter than those for medical records -- and rightly
so. He said quick access to medical records is needed for emergency care, and such
records are unlikely to trample other people's privacy rights, as e-mail could.
Rather than maintaining an either-or policy, perhaps service
providers could ask users when they sign up whether they'd like e-mail disclosed
upon death, said Jason Catlett, president of the privacy-rights group Junkbusters
Corp.
"If you put money into an IRA (individual retirement account)
or a mutual fund, they will ask you for the next of kin," Catlett said.
But Graham said cell phone providers and fitness centers don't
make similar requests, and doing so with Internet service "is simply a turnoff and
it's not necessary. We already have a process that works quite well and quite responsibly."
For now, such disputes are rare, and most struggles for access
involve family members who need to obtain financial records on a computer, said
Bob Weiss, president of Password Crackers Inc., a Maryland company that recovers
lost passwords. Less than 2 percent of Weiss's business involves relatives of the
deceased, he said.
Still, "as more of our lives go online, hosted faraway, we
will want to think carefully about the disposition of those bits," said Jonathan
Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Decades of laws and court decisions already guide physical
possessions, especially when there is no will. What makes online assets different
is the fact that they often involve some service contract with an outside company,
said R. Michael Daniel, an estates attorney in Pittsburgh.
The easiest approach, Internet scholars say, is simply to leave
behind a password.
"I think this (Yahoo) case will be helpful to people who are
thinking about issues not only of inheritance but planning," said Jonathan I. Ezor,
a professor of law and technology at Touro Law Center in Huntington, New York. "When
one family member tells another where the important paperwork is, the will, safe
deposit box key, etc., the list of passwords is going to be added to that."
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