The overwhelming majority of ordinary citizens in Australia, Canada, UK and USA useemail and the internet every day.
Digital assets are any assets which are accessed or held online or in electronic digitalformat. Despite the explosive growth in the volume of such assets that the averagecitizen now owns or controls, these digital assets often get overlooked entirely when itcomes to writing a Will or power of attorney.
Difficulties are experienced when attempting to apply delegated authority (such aspower of attorney) to digital assets.
Families of deceased users of digital assets are surprised at the difficulty and uncertaintyexperienced in attempting to deal with such assets.
Due to the uncertain status of ownership and control of digital assets, and the inherentdifficulties in extraterritorial application of laws or Court orders upon internationalcompanies hosting these assets, the Mental Capacity SIG of STEP is concerned toclarify issues relating to the access, control & ownership of digital assets following theincapacity or death of the registered user.
