Digital inheritance
Digital inheritance is the process of handing over digital assets to (human) beneficiaries.
Problem
During the past thousands of years we have largely used rules that are based on roman law to rule who gets what from our estate. The roman law introduced the concept of universal succession, which means that e.g. in inheritance law the heirs enter into the legal position regarding property rights (includes duties and rights) of the testator by law. [1]
Today however digital assets and also digital acquaintanceship are replacing their physical equivalents. A solution is required to hand-over digital assets to data heirs. We need to be able to assign, re-assign, and de-assign data to heirs in a self-managed way.
A solution is required to handover digital assets with memo value as well as data that is crucial for our successors to find their way through the digital world. The relevant digital data sets include passwords, instructive memos, digital contracts, digital receipts, pictures, medical information (e.g. about inheritable diseases). Today, more and more values are resting on media that are not owned by the data owner but by service provider (e.g. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, etc). [2]
In contrast to conventional inheritance of physical assets, digital inheritance also needs to cope with the fact that the digital heirs may only be known by their email addresses or mobile numbers. Further on other than familiy jewelry it is likely that nobody knows about specific files of the testator.
Also in contrast to physical values, electronic values can be copied indefinitely, which maybe problematic if the asset represents intellectual properties. On the other hand it poses a challenge for many data heirs to receive or to create copies for all interestees when they have limited IT skills themselves.
A further challenge comes with the extreme proliferation of digital data. Average of 5-10 GByte of new digital assets per year (per family) if one takes digital pictures into account, is rather common. Data heirs that are faced with an un-sorted data flood are often unable to separate the nice-to-have from crucial and core assets.
Yet another problem is posed by the fact that contracts with service providers most often are automatically terminated (by the terms of service) as soon as the customer seizes to exist. Meaning that there is no right for the heirs to access that data.
Application
Digital Inheritance should be setup wherever important data needs to be handed-over in case of an event that renders the owner incapable of caring for those assets. The data owner hence has an interest to list (or centrally store) his/her assets and decide who will need which data. The data owner will also need to specify the circumstances under which the data shall be handed over to heirs (generally this is simply the death of the owner) but it can be difficult and extremely annoying to proof the death in an international setup where heirs, data sources and last residence of the owner are internationally spread. The data owner will also need to have a way for secure and guaranteed notifications of data heirs even if they are only reachable via electronic channels.
Other applications can be to simply document the digital essence of a person, meaning to fulfill one of the oldest and deepest human wishes, to leave traces and become remembered.
Legal perspective
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Limitations and alternatives
In absence of solutions that can provide the above application the probably simplest approach to digital inheritance is to create regularly a backup of the most important assets and deposit it offsite (e,g, a bank vault) and consequently determine a single person (lawyer, partner, children) that will post-mortem distribute the data. This should also include a list of passwords to online (and local) accounts. Obvious challenges are here in the area of security, data readability (are there still readers for the media, are there still programs for the files) and manageability (uptodateness of the backup as well as assignments to heirs).
See also
Will_(law) ; Inheritance ; Executor ; Trustee