What is a Digital Will?
These days, more and more services around the globe have started offering digital wills to help people protect their assets and estates.
And this is not some fancy new hype. Traditional wills have plenty of inherent problems that digital wills try to solve, such as:
- Lack of transparency for your loved ones
If you create a traditional will now and store it in a drawer, will your loved ones know where it is after 30, 40 or more years? This risk alone invalidates the whole idea of wills, that they must ensure peace of mind and protection for your loved ones.
- People living in different cities or countries
It’s not easy to share the traditional will as it is on paper and you must share it physically with your beneficiaries — quite difficult when they live far away from you.
- Difficult to keep up to date
Traditional wills take the approach that you spend considerable time and money once and will be protected throughout your lifetime. Think about what assets you possessed 10 years ago and compare them with the picture now. Quite a different asset catalog, right?
People these days have very dynamic asset catalogs
They open accounts in neo banks, create digital wallets, move to other countries and have local bank accounts and local insurances, invest in startup companies, receive stocks and options as part of their compensation packages, and open accounts in online trading platforms.
You can’t expect to go to your lawyer each time your asset catalog changes. Traditional wills are simply not fit for this modern reality.
When you add to this potential changes in your inheritance preferences and changes in your family situation, such as marriages or the birth of children, you can see that you need another solution to keeping your will up to date.
Digital wills try to solve all the disadvantages of traditional wills, but there is still plenty of confusion out there about them.
• Is a digital will the same as an online will or e-will?
• Do digital wills offer the same protection as traditional wills?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of digital wills compared to traditional wills?
Let’s review these questions and several more in an effort to shed some light on the topic.
Digital Wills
Digital wills are provided by online services to enable people to easily create and maintain their wills.
Digital wills have the same goal as traditional wills — to enable people to protect their digital, financial, and physical assets and ensure they’ll be inherited by their families.
Digital wills also have similar characteristics to traditional wills: the testators specify beneficiaries for their assets, inheritance preferences, witnesses, an executor of the will, the country and state, and, of course, the date.
The date is important as a person might update their will multiple times in their lifetime, so it’s very important to know which is the latest will.
On the surface, digital wills look similar to traditional wills, but they have many very important advantages. Some of these advantages are related to ease of use and convenience, but others significantly enhance the level of protection of your legacy. They are so important that they might be the difference between your loved ones inheriting your assets or not.
Are Digital Wills legally binding?
The answer to this question largely depends on your country and state. More and more countries in the world have approved digital wills as legally binding.
In the USA, for example, in 2019, the Uniform Law Commission approved and recommended for enactment the E-Wills Act, the goal of which is to allow people to create and execute digital wills.
Many other countries are following suit. Of course, there are some caveats. For example, some countries allow for e-signature by the witnesses, while others require recorded video sessions.
Despite these differences, the path forward seems clear. In the very near future, most of the countries in the world will recognize digital wills as legally binding, in the same way as traditional wills are today.
Developed countries such as the USA and the UK are already taking the lead.
How to plan for it
The best way to plan for your digital will is to combine it with digital inheritance.
Your assets will be protected through the Digital Will, and, at the same time, the digital inheritance service will give you peace of mind that your loved ones will know where to identify and locate your assets.
DGLegacy and Digital Will
What does DGLegacy have to do with a Digital Will?
With DGLegacy, you can protect your personal assets and loved ones in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
You can catalog your digital, financial, and non-financial assets and assign them to your preferred beneficiary, at the time you choose — while ensuring that your executor will know where to find your will.
With DGLegacy, you can protect all types of assets. It is also easy to keep your list of assets and beneficiaries up to date.
This way, in the event of anything unforeseen happening to you, your loved ones:
- Are aware of your assets
- Can identify and locate your assets
- Can minimize the chance of unclaimed assets.
Originally published at https://www.dglegacy.com.
