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Having recently encountered a situation in which an executor-husband had to address the issue with his wife, just prior to her death, Mr. Dri has become more sensitive to both the emotional and financial difficulties that can arise. As a result, he now raises the question routinely with clients, including the possibility of appointing a special executor just for digital assets.
Generally, executors have wide powers to settle an estate, such as obtaining access to online banking information. But that is not true of other digital assets, especially social media including assets on Google LLC, Apple Inc. and Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms Inc. Despite sometimes having huge values, many owners are not considering how these assets are to be dealt with by others, says Brian Mosoff, president and founding member of Canadian Web3 Council, a group that advocates for the use of cryptocurrencies, and chief executive officer at Ether Capital in Toronto.
“The responsibility is solely on the individual to give clear guidance to family members or whomever it will be passed to how they would access the assets, what they are holding and where,” he says. She adds that such orders, which may cost $10,000 to obtain, may even be modified or ignored by the platform in terms of what it is willing to share.