This is an interesting question for legal profession.
The best would be to have a digital executor in addition to any other executor named in your
will.
In absence of a will, the one who takes out a grant of letters of administration will require assistance from the hosts of
your digital assets which is not wise, as identifying and accessing would be a problem.
The main focus is ,in your absence, how would the assets be accessed? One with the ability to access is the suitable executor.
If it is just mpesa, Safaricom or equivalent will open it for the person with the confirmed grant of letters of administration.
For the others, you need to have a digital estate inventory and also plan what you want to happen whether continuity or winding up.
How do you think you can have someone inherit your passwords in a safe manner.Apply technology to that.
The office of Public Trustee should by now have provision for a tech-savy person in their department for the digital assets of
those who will have no will, no one to apply for grant of letters of administration. Such estates are managed by the Public Trustee.(hope you are not a lawyer because if you are, am being irrelevant).
The other problem, is that we do not yet have rules in place to address how unidentified digital assets can be forwarded to public trustee.
The best for now as we wait for rules, is to have your most trusted spouse or child who is a techy into all your digital assets and plans.
Disclaimer- Am not very ICT knowledgeable, being an old stone age lawyer , but I got interested in the unfolding challenges in the legal sphere and joined the previous IP/ICT LSK committee which put us on board Kictanet. I do not understand most of the stuff but I just read.
I also dig to see how the laws are catching up with technology, very poor, as we are yet to be clear on digital signatures.
Hope the bit above will guide you.
Regards,
Gertrude Matata
Stone Age Lawyer.
GERTRUDE MATATA
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