This month we are doing a series of recurring blogs on the role of digital assets in estate matters. The topic of digital assets in estate planning most typically deals with questions surrounding who gets control of your digital assets after you die. Questions like who controls your social media accounts after you die and how your executor can gain access to things like cryptocurrency or your digital media libraries are often raised as examples. Although all of these are important topics, what if you don’t want someone having access to certain of your digital assets after you die. Is there a way to make these assets “self-destruct” upon your death?
I recently came across an interesting article that discusses just such a topic in relation to your Gmail account, outlining the steps you can take to have your Gmail account “self-destruct” after you die. The article notes that Google offers a service for their Gmail accounts called “Inactive Account Manager” which, although not specifically designed to cause your Gmail account to self-destruct after your death, could theoretically be utilized for just such a purpose.
The Inactive Account Manager service allows any account holder to set a pre-determined amount of time before Google will consider the account “inactive” and permanently delete the account. As a result if you are someone who regularly uses your Gmail account such that any prolonged period in which you do not login could only mean your death you could theoretically use the Inactive Account Manager feature to cause your Gmail account to self-destruct and delete itself after your death.
Since Google will not know of the timing of your death (at least not yet), with the feature instead being based on account inactivity, if you are using the Inactive Account Manager feature to self-destruct your Gmail account after your death you will need to pick an amount of time for the inactivity to ensure the activity is actually your death and not something like a prolonged vacation. To help safeguard against any false alarms Google allows you to designate an individual to be notified of the pending deletion of your account, with such an individual hopefully stepping in to ensure your account is not deleted if it is in fact a false alarm.
Thank you for reading.