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What happens to Digital Assets when you die?

By Estatesearch on November 9th, 2022
Estatesearch launch new series of technical webinars with two sessions looking at ‘What Happens to Digital Assets When You Die?’

Digital Assets are increasingly common in estate administration as technology continues to expand into our modern lives. It is estimated that 66% of the total UK population has an active Facebook account and according to the FCA, in 2021 2.3 million UK adults owned Cryptocurrency. 

From the sentimental such as photographs or documents to those with monetary value, Digital Assets can be defined as anything that someone owns that exists in a digital format. These should all be dealt with as part of the deceased’s estate.

In July this year, the Law Commission published a consultation paper that set out provisional law reform proposals to ensure the recognition of Digital Assets as ‘property’ under English Property Law. The proposal, if successful, should have a positive impact on how Digital Assets are managed and protected both in life and after death.

In this new series of technical webinars, we invite Dave Michels, researcher at the Cloud Legal Project, Queen Mary University of London, to explain what happens to Digital Assets when you die and the effect the Law Commission proposal may have.

These two 30 minutes webinars aim to support your understanding of how Digital Assets are currently viewed by law and what the proposed changes mean for practitioners.


Property Rights in Digital Assets

Tuesday 29th November at 2pm

In this session we will look at

  • What is currently recognised as ‘Property’ in English Property Law?
  • What impact might the Law Commissions proposal for ‘Data Objects’ as a new category have?
  • What does all this mean in practice for different kinds of Digital Assets including:
    • Crypto-tokens
    • Digital Files
    • Email Accounts
    • In Game assets and
    • Domain Names?

Cloud Contracts and Post-Mortem Access

Wednesday 7th December at 11am

This second session will cover

  • How do property rights and contracts impact the succession to digital assets?
  • What do cloud contracts say about post-mortem access – and what does this mean for practitioners?
  • Should the law favour post-mortem access, or post-mortem privacy?

Check out our NEW! Digital Assets Bolt-on Search here.

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