INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Ivan A. Sacks, Withers
parental recognition, creating uncertainty about the legal status of children for inheritance purposes. As a result, estate planners increasingly advise clients to address these possibilities explicitly in their wills and trusts. Documents may specify whether post- humously conceived children should be included as beneficiaries, how parentage is to be determined in cases involving assisted reproduction and how assets should be managed for children born through surro- gacy arrangements. Over time, courts and legislatures are gradually adapting succession law to accommo- date these evolving family realities, but the pace of change remains uneven across jurisdictions. Digital Assets and the Transformation of Wealth Another major force reshaping estate planning is the rapid expansion of digital assets and digital life. A generation ago, most wealth existed in physical or easily identifiable forms: real estate, bank accounts, securities certificates and tangible personal property. Today, significant portions of both financial and per- sonal value exist entirely in digital form. At the most basic level, individuals now maintain extensive digital footprints. Email accounts, social media profiles, online photo libraries, cloud stor- age and subscription services may contain valuable personal records and intellectual property. Access to these accounts is typically governed by complex terms-of-service agreements and privacy laws that were not originally designed with post-mortem access in mind. Families frequently discover after a death that they cannot easily retrieve digital photographs, cor- respondence or other sentimental materials without proper authorisation. To address these challenges, a number of jurisdictions have enacted legislation per- mitting the designation of “digital executors” or oth- erwise clarifying fiduciary access to digital accounts. These laws attempt to balance the privacy interests of the deceased with the practical needs of estate administration. Estate planners increasingly recom- mend that clients maintain secure inventories of digital accounts, passwords and access instructions, often stored through specialised digital vault services or encrypted records accessible to trusted fiduciaries.
Beyond personal digital accounts, the rise of purely digital financial assets presents even greater chal- lenges. Cryptocurrencies and other blockchain-based assets represent a rapidly expanding category of wealth that may exist entirely outside traditional finan- cial institutions. Unlike conventional bank accounts, these assets are often controlled solely through cryptographic private keys. If those keys are lost or inaccessible at the owner’s death, the assets them- selves may effectively disappear. High-profile cases of lost cryptocurrency holdings have highlighted the importance of careful planning. Estate planners must now ask clients not only about conventional assets, but also about digital wallets, decentralised finance accounts and other blockchain-based holdings. Plan- ning strategies may include multi-signature wallets, hardware storage devices with controlled access procedures and carefully documented instructions for fiduciaries. Even traditional financial assets are becoming increas- ingly digital. Investment accounts, online banking platforms and payment services are often accessed solely through digital interfaces. The practical admin- istration of an estate therefore requires that executors or trustees understand how to locate, verify and man- age these accounts while complying with cybersecu- rity and privacy regulations. The broader implications of digitalisation extend beyond crypto- and digitally stored financial asset transfer. Digital identities, online intellectual property and virtual goods – ranging from monetised social media channels to digital art and non-fungible tokens – may themselves constitute valuable components of an individual’s estate. Determining how such assets should be valued, transferred or preserved presents novel legal and practical questions that the estate planning profession is only beginning to address. Adapting the Practice of Estate Planning Taken together, these developments illustrate how succession planning is being reshaped by forces that extend far beyond established legal rules and doc- trines. The demographics of our aging society, global mobility amidst roiling tax-regime change, evolv- ing social norms and technological transformation are interacting in ways that challenge fundamental
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