Delaware and the Digital Dead

An article in yesterdays Wall Street Journal [Jacob Gershman, Delaware Eases Access to Digital Data of Dead]  prompts us to think about what happens to that stuff we have been saving when we die.  Delaware, which is not known for its innovation in legislation, has decided to be the first to take this on.  The bill signed by the governor gives authority to estate attorneys, and a few others, to deal with e-mail, cloud accounts and data, and social media.  Anyone who has gotten a birthday announcement for a relative that died a year ago, knows why we need such things.

It is not surprising that the industry most affected would fight this law by bringing up a 1986 law that says electronic communications companies cannot disclose digital content without the owner's consent.  The fact that the owner is dead, according to this argument, is not material to the issue.   I'm wondering why they don't just do it, and stop this kind of spurious chatter that makes them look like they are just being bad.  Other states need to get involved the same way and pass their own, or we can get Congress to pass a similar law for the whole country.

I have a suspended account from Google that I still haven't been able to get rid of and I am still alive.  If I died, my wife would have no chance of ever getting that account closed.  There may be nothing in it of any importance, but I would never know because I haven't been able to get into it for 5 years.

When my favorite aunt died a few years ago, we wanted to get some of her e-mail so we could stop automated payments she set up for some charities.  We didn't know where some of them were and it takes time to close accounts that they were paid from.  The executor and his attorney couldn't get much of anything.  The bank closed the accounts, only after getting a death certificate which takes time to get,  but never did say where all of these things were being paid, or for how long after her death.  By the time it gets ironed out, it isn't worth the legal fees.

So, I wonder why places like Facebook and Google want to hire a law firm to fight this, when they know that when a person dies, somebody needs to know what records they might have that are important to settling the estate and terminating those accounts.  Delaware may not be the most innovative legislatures, but they sure got this one right.