Delaware passes law that grants heirs access to social media accounts of the deceased

Shawn Knight

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delaware agrees families inherit social media accounts deceased delaware social media assets will executor digital assets

Losing a loved one is never easy but if you've ever been through the experience, you already know that things can be much less complicated if they had a will in place. But the question still remains as to what to do with digital assets of the deceased - things like their Facebook, Twitter and e-mail accounts as well as devices.

Delaware has come up with a solution. As outlined in the recently passed Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts Act, heirs of an estate and the executor of the will are given the same power over digital assets as they are physical belongings.

Daryl Scott, the lead author of the bill, correctly points out that this problem is an example of something we see all the time in our hi-tech age: our laws simply haven't kept up with advancements in technology.

Whether or not the law is actually a good idea, however, is still up for debate.

Some would argue that having the ability to moderate or close social media accounts after a loved one dies would be of great value but others believe it's little more than an invasion of privacy.

Jim Halpert is an attorney with DLA Piper and the director of the State Privacy and Security Coalition. In an interview with Ars, Halpert said the law doesn't take into account the privacy of third parties that communicated with the deceased before they died.

True enough, such communications (think e-mail here) could have been highly confidential in nature and have an impact on those still living.

What's your take on the new law? Do you believe those in charge of your estate should have access to your digital assets upon your death or should said accounts and their content follow you to the grave?

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I'm not sure whats so complicated here, shouldn't the deceased social networking accounts automatically be closed after the social networks have been informed of their passing by the executor of the will?
Surely FB, Twitter etc. have made provision for this...
 
Well, copyright passes to the estate, and since online content is covered by copyright, it makes sense that the heirs who own the copyright also get access to the accounts where the copyrighted material exists.
 
There should really be a self destruct option on social media where Facebook (or whatever network) deactivates/deletes upon notification of death.

I'm not sure if it should be opt-in or opt-out, but it should be an option.
 
I'm not sure whats so complicated here, shouldn't the deceased social networking accounts automatically be closed after the social networks have been informed of their passing by the executor of the will?
Surely FB, Twitter etc. have made provision for this...

Actually, in a number of instances there is no will so no executor. In my case a sister of mine disposed of all her worldly goods well in advance of her death, but fortunately left me ID's and PW's of all her accounts across many sites. As an experiment I tried to work with the webmasters to close some of these and ran into a brick wall. With all the scamming going around I can understand their reluctance but must also agree that there certainly should be SOME form of remedy.
 
Actually, in a number of instances there is no will so no executor. In my case a sister of mine disposed of all her worldly goods well in advance of her death, but fortunately left me ID's and PW's of all her accounts across many sites. As an experiment I tried to work with the webmasters to close some of these and ran into a brick wall. With all the scamming going around I can understand their reluctance but must also agree that there certainly should be SOME form of remedy.
I'm sorry to hear about the passing of your sister. :(
 
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