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Should online accounts die when you die?
WASHINGTON - (AP) -- Should your emails, web albums and other online accounts die when you do? Or should you be able to pass them down to a family member much as you would a house or a box of letters?
A leading group of lawyers says that families should immediately get access to everything online unless otherwise specified in a will. They are urging state lawmakers to enact their proposal so loved ones don't get shut out as American lives move increasingly online.
"Our email accounts are our filing cabinets these days," said Suzanne Brown Walsh, a Cummings & Lockwood attorney who led the effort. But "if you need access to an email account, in most states you wouldn't get it."
The Uniform Law Commission, whose members are appointed by state governments to help standardize state laws, on Wednesday endorsed the plan for "digital assets." It would give loved ones access to -- but not control of -- the deceased's digital accounts unless a will says otherwise.
To become law, the legislation would have to be adopted by each state's legislature. It would trump "terms of service" agreements by tech companies that prohibit people from accessing an account that isn't theirs.
"This is something most people don't think of until they are faced with it. They have no idea what is about to be lost," said Karen Williams of Beaverton, Oregon, who sued Facebook for access to her 22-year-old son Loren's account after he died in a 2005 motorcycle accident.
Facebook and other tech companies have been reluctant to hand over their customers' private data, and many people say they wouldn't want their families to have unfettered access to their life online. But when confronted with death, families say they need access to settle financial details or simply for sentimental reasons.
What's more, certain online accounts can be worth real money, such as a popular cooking blog or a gaming avatar that has acquired certain status online.
Privacy activists are skeptical of the proposal. Ginger McCall, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said a judge's approval should be needed for access, to protect the privacy of both the owners of accounts and the people who communicate with them.
"The digital world is a different world" from offline, McCall said. "No one would keep 10 years of every communication they ever had with dozens or even hundreds of other people under their bed."
Many people assume they can decide what happens by sharing certain passwords with a trusted family member, or even making those passwords part of their will. But in addition to potentially exposing passwords when a will becomes public record, anti-hacking laws and the terms of service agreements prohibit that.
Several tech providers have come up with their own solutions. Facebook, for example, will "memorialize" accounts by allowing already confirmed friends to continue to view photos and old posts. Google, which runs Gmail, YouTube and Picasa Web Albums, offers its own version: If people don't log on after a while, their accounts can be deleted or shared with a designated person. Yahoo users agree when signing up that their accounts expire when they do.
But the courts aren't convinced that a company supplying the technology should get to decide what happens to a person's digital assets. In 2005, a Michigan probate judge ordered Yahoo to hand over the emails of a Marine killed in Iraq after his parents argued that their son would have wanted to share them. Likewise, a court eventually granted Williams, the Oregon mother, access to her son's Facebook account, although she says the communications appeared to be redacted.
Williams said she supports letting people decide in their wills whether accounts should be kept from family members.
"I could understand where some people don't want to share everything," she said in a phone interview this week. "But to us, losing him (our son) unexpectedly, anything he touched became so valuable to us." And "if we were still in the era of keeping a shoebox full of letters, that would have been part of the estate, and we wouldn't have thought anything of it."
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New York State Estate Tax Exemption
The New York estate tax threshold is $6.94 million in 2024 and will continue to increase with inflation each year after that.
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Rising nursing-home costs affect 'lookback'
The amount is important for those looking to qualify for nursing-home care paid for by Medicaid, but who face an ineligibility period under the "lookback" rule. The rule examines whether the Medicaid applicant, in the five years before applying for Medicaid, gave away monetary gifts or transferred property to make his or her assets small enough to qualify for coverage. (Transfers to a spouse are exempt.)
The ineligibility period is calculated by dividing the value of the transferred assets into the monthly cost of nursing-home care. So if someone transferred assets worth $50,000 during the five-year lookback, he or she would be ineligible for Medicaid-paid nursing-home coverage for about four months, meaning the family of the patient would be responsible for paying the costs until Medicaid kicks in.
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Court Upholds Government Right to Search Laptops and Phones at Border Crossings
A federal judge said Tuesday that the government has a right to search the portable electronic devices of travelers and dismissed a lawsuit that challenged the policy.
The decision impacts travelers entering the U.S. by air and other means including automobile and train.
The suit had been filed in 2010 by a graduate student, Pascal Abidor, who sued after U.S. border agents from an Amtrak train while en route from Canada to New York removed him. He was handcuffed and questioned for several hours, and his laptop was seized and held by the agents for 11 days.
In addition to Abidor, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Press Photographers Association were also plaintiffs in the case. The two groups argued that the confidential information with which their members frequently travel needs to be protected from search and seizure.
In his ruling, Judge Edward R. Korman of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York held that the plaintiffs did not have standing for their suit because such border searches occur so rarely “there is not a substantial risk that their electronic devices will be subject to a search or seizure without reasonable suspicion.”
The judge also found that, even if the plaintiffs had had standing, they would lose on the merits of the case, ruling that the government does not need reasonable suspicion to examine or confiscate a traveler’s laptop computer, mobile phone, or other electronic device at the U.S. border.
The judge also openly questioned whether travelers need to take laptops containing sensitive data with them on trips out of the country.
“While it is true that laptops may make overseas work more convenient,” he wrote in his ruling, “the precautions plaintiffs may choose to take to ‘mitigate’ the alleged harm associated with the remote possibility of a border search are simply among the many inconveniences associated with international travel.”
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California ruled that the government needs reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in order to conduct a forensic search of an electronic device confiscated at the border, versus a less extensive look at photos or files. That decision only applies to states covered by the Ninth Circuit, including Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
The circuit court’s ruling has more wide-ranging implications as well as legal impact versus the district court ruling.
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MORE ESTATE PLANS ACCOUNT FOR DIGITAL ASSETS
Wall Street Journal
People draft estate plans so they can pass their money and property on to their heirs after they become incapacitated or die.
But what happens to their other assets--so called "digital assets" such as an iTunes account containing thousands of songs or a Twitter account with hundreds of followers?
Questions like these are popping up with more frequency among financial advisers and their clients when it comes time to lay the groundwork for estate plans.
Advisers say it's becoming more crucial for their clients to ensure their digital assets are incorporated into their estate plans along with the hard assets: If they fail to do so, their family or loved ones may never be able access their digital photos, games, music or videos, as well as their email, online-banking and social-media accounts.
Getty Images
"Good advisers are paying more and more attention to these assets," said Justin T. Miller, national wealth strategist in the San Francisco office of BNY Mellon Wealth Management, which oversees more than $188 billion.
Of course, key to making sure heirs can access the digital assets of, say, their parents or spouses are passwords and provisions spelling out the transfer of assets and account ownership. Estate attorneys also sometimes recommend using a trust to hold digital assets so heirs won't have to worry about getting access after the owner dies.
Meanwhile, the issue has caught the attention of a group of state commissioners who plan next month to unveil a proposed law that would let states grant fiduciaries the right to manage or distribute clients' digital assets. Currently, only Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and Rhode Island allow that, according to the Uniform Law Commission, the group drafting the law.
Anyone trying to manage online affairs in an estate knows the job can be daunting because of the different kinds of assets involved, said Katie Robinson, the group's deputy legislative director. A virtual sword, used in a online game and which cost its owner $17,000, is her favorite example. Also, the rules on access and transferring ownership vary from asset to asset, she said.
Mr. Miller of BNY Mellon noted that when advisers ask clients about their online dealings, they often react with surprise. Even the technology executives he counsels have given little thought to how to provide their heirs access. He now tries to bring up the subject with all his clients.
So does Katherine Dean, managing director of wealth planning for Wells Fargo Private Bank, which manages $170 billion. One couple worth around $20 million seemed abashed, she said, when she gave them a one-page checklist listing digital assets as data they needed to provide to help make a comprehensive financial plan.
"They said 'Oh my gosh, we've got to go online to get this,'" said Ms. Dean. "Whenever we hear that, we take the time to have the conversation that this is very important."
A good estate plan preserves family heritage, not just access to financial accounts or assets. Photos and other materials stored online may not be worth a lot of money, but they are often priceless in terms of sentimental value, Ms. Dean said.
Trying to place a dollar amount on the worth of one's digital assets is an inexact science. However, a McAfee survey last month found that U.S. consumers estimate their digital assets are worth nearly $30,000 per individual. Respondents valued digitally stored personal memories at $16,581. They put an estimate of $6,100 on personal records, $2,847 on hobbies and projects, and $1,689 on career information.
When it comes to writing a will, estate advisers caution against putting a list of assets and passwords into it because a will can become public. Instead, data should go into a separate letter, said Lesley Moss, an attorney at law firm Oram & Moss in Chevy Chase, Md.
In the past year or so, Ms. Moss has heard from more clients concerned about their online accounts. Among them are older folks who've discovered Facebook as a way to keep up with the grandkids--and some clients have told her they want their pages shut down after they die.
"They are starting to think about the repercussions," she said.
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US TREASURY & IRS ANNOUNCE ALL LEGAL SAME -SEX MARRIAGES RECOGNIZED FOR FEDERAL TAX PURPOSES-U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have ruled that same-sex couples, legally married in jurisdictions that recognize their marriages, will be treated as married for federal tax purposes. The ruling applies regardless of whether the couple lives in a jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriage or a jurisdiction that does not recognize same-sex
marriage. The ruling implements federal tax aspects of the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating a key provision of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. See Frequently Asked Questions for same-sex couples on IRS.gov.
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TEXTING WHILE STOPPED AT RED LIGHT IS OK? Nassau and Suffolk police departments advise that the recently enacted NY state law allows a driver to use an electronic device as long as the car is not moving. http://www.newsday.com/columnists/judy-cartwright/watchdog-texting-while-stopped-at-red-light-is-ok-cops-say-1.5934526
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SUSPENSION OF DRIVERS' LICENSES OF NYS TAX DELINQUENTS-
A law in NY requires the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance and the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to establish a driver’s license suspension program. This program will
aid in the collection of past-due state tax liabilities by suspending the drivers’ licenses of taxpayers with past-due tax liabilities of $10,000 or more. There are exceptions for taxpayers holding a
commercial driver’s license and taxpayers making certain child support payments or combined child and spousal support payments.
For purposes of the license suspension program, the following definitions apply:
• Tax liabilities means any tax, surcharge, or fee administered by the Commissioner of Taxation and Finance, or any penalty or interest due on these amounts owed by an individual with a NYS
driver’s license.
• Driver’s license means any license issued by the DMV, except for a commercial driver’s license as defined in section 501-a of
the Vehicle and Traffic Law.
• Past-due tax liabilities means any tax liability or liabilities that have become fixed and final, and the taxpayer no longer has any right to administrative or judicial review.
The Tax Department and DMV are authorized to share certain taxpayer identifying information (such as names, addresses, and social security numbers) in order to carry out the enforcement
provisions of the program.
For this and other NYS tax changes, please see http://www.st-cpas.com/E-Newsletters/dl/m13_4i.pdf#page=12&zoom=100,70,421
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THANKS TO POOR ESTATE PLANNING- IRS WILL BE THE BIGGEST BENEFICIARY OF ACTOR JAMES GANDOLFINI'S ESTATE-READ WHY-http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/07/08/james-gandolfini-will-estate-tax/?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl25%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D341485
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NYS DRIVERS BEWARE- NYS boosted the number of penalty points on a license from three to five points for those caught chatting or texting while operating a motor vehicle. The move, done administratively by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, affects drivers of all ages, and could push some drivers closer to the point of having their licenses suspended and endure higher insurance premiums.
Using a hand-held electronic device for any reason – checking emails, texting or reading a map – would be covered by the higher penalties.
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ATTENTION NEW YORK AREA APWU & NATIONAL POSTAL MAIL HANDLER UNION MEMBERS-
I have met many of you at Retirement Planning Meetings. Remember, you are welcome to contact me for a complimentary estate planning consultation. Click on the Contact Us link, call or email for an appointment.
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