Solitaire Confinement

We have already traveled this road, but it is worth revisiting.  After the death of her husband in August, a Canadian woman was locked out of her husband's Apple account because she did not know his Apple ID.  She discovered this when her card favorite game would not function and she was unable to reinstall the game. Apple told her she needed  a court order to change the password, or she could create her own Apple ID an repurchase the game.

Three quick points:

1.  I advise all of my clients to write down their on-line passwords and notify their executor of their location so their executor can access their digital assets after death.

2.  My wills authorize the executor to access any digital accounts.

3.  In this woman's case, she would have been far wiser to spend $2.99 to download a new version of the game.

King of Pop Still Reigns

When Michael Jackson died 4 years ago, his net worth was negative $500 million.   Since then, his estate has earned $1.1 billion and grows larger daily.  A new Vegas show, Michael Jackson One, opened last week and is expected to run for 10 years.  A prior show, Michael Jackson - the Immortal World Tour,  has run for 2 years and is expected to run for at least 2 more.  Jackson has earned more money since he died than during his life and is the biggest selling artist on iTunes.  He is survived by 3 children of either debatable paternity or unknown maternity, all of whom have unusual or odd names.

Several points:

1.  Estates can continue to earn money after the death of the individual.

2.  Estate administration can be simplified if the earnings rights are transferred to a trust.

3.  Biggest selling artist on iTunes?  Do baby boomers still not know how to rip their CD collections, nor share them with their children?

4.  Negative $500 million net worth?  A personal amusement park and zoo are expensive.

Bruce Willis vs. iTunes

Continuing the recent unintended theme of celebrity posts while dovetailing with last week's post about iTunes.  Bruce Willis is rumored to be contemplating a lawsuit against Apple over his desire to leave his iTunes account to his children upon his death.  As mentioned last week, he (nor anyone) currently does not have that right under Apple's end user license agreement. 

Presumably he does have the right to leave his children his rights to "Return of Bruno."   There is no word on whether they actually want it though.        

Who Inherits an iTunes Account?

An issue that seems more problematic in theory than practice is who inherits digital assets at death. Technically, the purchaser of digital content has acquired the "non-transferable" right to use the items.  Theoretically, there is no right to leave these assets to heirs and it is very difficult to distribute parts of these assets among various heirs (i.e. R.E.M. collection to daughter, Eminem songs to son).

The simple solution is to share the password so that the collection can continue to be accessed post-death on whatever devices the decedent used (i.e. Kindle, iPod).  Logistically, integrating an iTunes library into another library is very technically challenging and merits a visit to www.ilounge.com.

However, from a practical perspective, do children want their parent's digital media and vice versa?  Growing up, my parents never had an album that interested me.  Looking back, I still see no need for a Ray Coniff Singers or Mitch Miller album in my collection.  Will others be worse off because they can not access a loved one's Lady Gaga, Lil' Wayne, or Black Eyed Peas collection?  Will family members want to watch Cars 2, Transformers, and any Pirates of the Caribbean movie in the future, not to mention episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Two and a Half Men?  I doubt it.  If I am right, perhaps Apple and Amazon are doing people a favor by not easing access to the digital content of deceased family members.