Digital assets like music, movies, and now NFTs are becoming more popular and abundant in people’s lives. I had a friend that purchased at least one music CD per week. After 30 years of this, he had a collection worth more than $50K. He had a similar DVD collection. For people who care about their digital music, movies, and any other digital asset, it’s important to know how you can protect them. With people buying these new digital assets, is it possible to secure your saved iTunes music library? What about your amazon books?
When I was thinking about retiring, I was apprehensive and to be honest frustrated. On the one hand, I had been in the same field and with the same company for over thirty years. I was frankly done and burned out. On the other hand, what was I going to do when I retired. Now all my friends had told me retirement will be great and I could golf all the time. The problem with that is I usually end up wanting to throw the golf clubs and walk away. I have another group of friends that bowl. Well that actually does sound fun, but I had elbow surgery several years ago and bowling is unfortunately out of the question. This is frustrating as I do not know what I am going to do when I am no longer working. I shared my retirement fears with my children. My daughter asked a great question. She asked, “What do you love to do now?”
It took me some time to figure out what I really like to do. I really didn’t have any hobbies, but when I really thought about it, I like to watch movies, read, listen to music, and explore social media platforms. I concluded that these are the things I wanted to do in my retirement. Since retiring about 5 years ago, I have really compiled a very impressive library of movies, music, and books. Times have changed since I was a kid. You used to have to go to a book or video store to buy these things, but, these days I can just go online and buy them digitally. My iTunes account has over 500 songs that I have organized into different genres. If I log into my Amazon account, this is where people might think that I am crazy. I have over two thousand movies. I absolutely love watching movies. I initially purchased all the old movies I grew up with and just kept adding more thereafter. What is crazy is I can go back and watch them whenever I want just by logging on. Now my book collection is not as impressive. At first, I wasn’t sure where to get books and thought I could just go to Amazon. Instead, I discovered the site eBooks had a much better selection. I signed up and have stockpiled about 300 books. I haven’t read all of the books yet, but I bought the ones I know I want to read or re-read because I get to keep them forever.
Being a single retired man, I really don’t get out too much. My way of keeping in touch with people is through social media. I mostly use Facebook and Instagram. I really enjoy looking at photos of my children, especially ones going back 5 years ago, and have saved an entire collection of family pictures. I also like to see what my old Marine friends are up to and repeatedly comment on their posts. Now, here is where I get into trouble. I am opinionated. My commentary over the years became quite popular and a friend on Facebook told me I should start my own channel. I took a chance and created my own YouTube account. I only have about 800 followers, but it’s quite fun for me to have my own podcast and talk about what is important to me.
One day I was talking with an old Marine buddy and he asked if I had set up a living trust. I told him I had heard of it, but really didn’t know what it was all about. Well, come to find out I needed one. Since I only have a home and some retirement accounts, it was easy to just split them evenly down the middle with my two kids. Deciding who would be my powers of attorney was easy as well. My daughter would handle the medical decisions and my son would deal with the financial decisions. However, I ran into some concerns when it came to my digital assets? How do I leave my Amazon, eBooks, iTunes, and social media accounts to my kids?
I searched all over the internet for options and discovered there is no ordinary way to leave digital assets as an inheritance. Most of those companies don’t allow movies and books to be transferred to new account holders. I also read back in 2012 Bruce Willis even considered a lawsuit to be able to leave these assets to his kids. I really felt my kids would love to watch my videos on YouTube or see all the pictures I saved on my Facebook and Instagram pages. I mean, wouldn’t it be great for them to be able to see all the movies grandpa liked? For me, this was as important as leaving them my house.
I decided to consult with my attorney and happily found out how to pass on these digital assets with ease. He said I could just add a note into my estate plan binder and provide my kids with all my account user names and passwords. I felt so relieved as sometimes these little things in life can be so important.
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This area of the website is for informational purposes only. The content is not legal advice. The statements and opinions are the expression of the author, not of the National Association of Family Services, and have not been evaluated by the National Association of Family Services for accuracy, completeness, or changes in the law.
