DIGITAL ASSETS ESTATE PLANNING

This interview explores the critical importance of managing digital assets in estate planning, highlighting the challenges of digital inheritance, account access, and cybersecurity risks. TATYANA THURSTON and NATALIA PARKER share insights on creating effective digital estate plans, tools, and best practices. https://youtu.be/2N56L51cD6Q https://open.spotify.com/episode/01ScInrdux6UOQ0G1kPzNF?si=uiCizZbOTEisa9PJ_D_S5g KEYWORDS: Digital assets, estate planning, digital inheritance, cybersecurity, online accounts, digital executor, wills, estate law, digital legacy, digital estate management KEY TOPICS Digital assets definition and scope Challenges in digital inheritance and estate planning Tools and strategies for digital asset management Legal and cybersecurity risks in digital estate planning Guest Name Tatiana Thurston and Natalia Parker Sound Bites "Biometric security doesn't work after death." "Planning ahead saves hundreds of hours and pain." "Domain name issues can take months to resolve." Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Digital Assets 01:28 Understanding Digital Assets and Their Importance 04:14 Challenges in Estate Planning for Digital Assets 09:17 Navigating Access and Security Risks 13:22 Creating an Inventory of Digital Assets 18:21 Preparing Executors for Digital Asset Management 24:40 Resources and Tools for Digital Asset Planning GUEST RESOURCES DEXITPLAN TRANSCRIPT Frazer Rice (00:01.146)Tatiana and Natalia, welcome aboard. Natalia Parker (00:04.206)Thank you. Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (00:04.211)Hi, thank you for having me. Frazer Rice (00:05.966)We are, this is a new frontier for wealth actually. You are the first two person interview I've done so far. So it looks like the technical issues seem to have gone away. That's great. But we're gonna talk about something that I think is the driver for your new company and something that's important to me because when I'm advising people around a lot of different topics, either estate planning wise or wealth management wise, the digital asset question comes up and. You've formed this new company. Tell us a little bit about that and more importantly tell us the problem that you're trying to solve around digital assets Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (00:40.83)Okay, so I'll first start with what is a digital asset because there's a lot of different definitions out there and a lot of people have different concepts of what it might mean. of all, because crypto is in the news quite a bit, it is not just about crypto. Everybody has digital assets because basically if you are logging into an account and it is storing data, you have an account that has assets online and it could be monetized. It could be social media, which means that the information that's there is very personal to you. It could be that you have reward points you've accumulated. There's all sorts of types of assets that are out there and there is a pain point problem. Let's die down. Natalia Parker (01:28.462)Yes, and we started actually, it was interesting, Tatiana just went through the process of writing a will and she will tell about it. I went through a divorce where we had online business and it was really, really hard to trace all those online accounts because I had no understanding how many we had and what to do with them and how even to find them. And Tatiana wrote a will. Frazer Rice (01:54.67)Yeah, no. so just to put a finer point on that, it's not only the monetary assets and the social media accounts and everything that basically requires a password to get into it probably in this day and age. Natalia Parker (02:10.252)Yes, and I can tell you more than I lost pictures of my family from my daughter's birth to age seven because I didn't think that the iCloud password and iCloud identity gone through a divorce. Yes. Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (02:10.336)That's all. Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (02:26.88)So she can resell for it. Yeah. Frazer Rice (02:26.992)Yeah, and a very painful thing to go through. so, Tatiana, as we sort of look at that example and make the definition a little bit even more in depth, how else do you sort of think about that in terms of the roles that are played from a Will's perspective? Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (02:49.366)So from a will perspective, you have two kinds of entities. You have things where business owners have created online accounts where their business is running off of certain platforms. And you also have a personal side aspect. And it may be an influencer, it may just be your personal account. The thing is that we're dealing with a problem of immortality. And this means that these accounts remain open, active and online, ready for hackers and ready for now, today, AI to continue the trajectory of that account because they're making money off of the data that we've put online. So we actually have two things to look at. One is from the business perspective and how do you transfer a business over? Because maybe you've built a platform for 10 years on Facebook, right? You have a following which is important to your base. Maybe you're just a mom and you've put all your baby pictures on there, like Natalia, and then what is the loss? What is the impact of that loss? And both are really difficult on families. So estate planning means that we actually need to be looking at these accounts, we actually need to be planning for these accounts, because down the line, it's gonna be a heavy impact, whether it's sociological, emotional, or monetary. Frazer Rice (04:14.552)So as we think about this little bit further, the concept that these accounts are going to live on beyond the life of someone who created them. Maybe dive into that a little bit, because I imagine you not only have points of risk, certainly during the lifetime, and someone hacking in and pillaging your bank account or otherwise maybe blocking access or something like that, but what happens when someone passes away? How do those risks translate to the people who are inheriting these properties? Natalia Parker (04:45.258)Okay, let's talk about it. We have those certain pain points. The first one, when somebody dies, the executor or administrator, they don't know what is existence. They don't know what kind of accounts the person had, what they wanted to do with those accounts. That's a first problem because they don't know even what banking, where the life insurance, did they have Venmo because they don't have access to phone. The second one, didn't know what the person wanted to do with that account. Did they want to close, transfer, memorize it? They have no clue. The other one is authority as an executor doesn't mean that you will get automatic access to the account. Many people think that yes, it is. No, for Google it doesn't matter. Unless you were appointed as inactive account manager. The same for Apple. Frazer Rice (05:48.68)I was going to say those annoying terms of services agreements that no one reads and you click so that you get, you move on with life and get into your accounts, that's where some of these details are buried. And the intersection between that and maybe what we call estate law and how an executor works, that's where the friction takes place. Natalia Parker (06:09.43)Yes, I agree and many people don't even know that that feature exists like legacy contact for Meta and Apple or inactive account manager. Otherwise, when you look at the hierarchy online tool, we call it Castonian tool, outweighs everything what you have in wheel. If the online tool wasn't enabled, then it goes what kind of language you had in wheel. if you appointed some digital executor and if that executor was authorized to have access to all your accounts. The third one, it always default to terms of service. Terms of service for basically 99 % of each company says do not give access. Frazer Rice (06:56.09)So if you were stuck and you didn't do anything and you relied on the terms of service, you could be in a really deep set of troubles. They might delete your account, they may not allow access, or they may make it otherwise very difficult in order to access and do it. You think that the person who died with it wanted to have done. Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (07:16.246)That's right. Natalia Parker (07:16.598)Absolutely. Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (07:17.504)That's why some of these really large companies have a custodial tool. You do have to go to certain settings within the device or within the account. And you can enable these tools so that you can either add what could be a legacy contact. It may not have the term beneficiary on it, but it's important to be able to enact that so that these settings will allow certain access down the line. A lot of the companies are very particular about that the larger ones have it and then a lot of them don't so Knowing which company has the most value to you and those terms of service is really important Frazer Rice (08:01.84).For someone who has an account that lives beyond them, there are identity and financial risks to having that. I can imagine, you know, when you put a credit card on file and, it's auto-debated or you have information lurking out there that that's a problem. Maybe talk a little bit about how bad that can get. Tatyana Thurston I Dexit (08:21.517).So I think there's a few issues on that. We all know that there are scammers and hackers. The really important stories that have come out in the past is where AI is enabling recopying your name, image, and likeness posing as you live on a video stream or live on a phone call asking for money or data or information. And this is becoming really prevalent. This is where families, if they want to save and secure their reputational legacy. But also perhaps crypto, perhaps their banking accounts, it's really important that they understand that t