Puff, The Magic Dragon, and the Estate Planner

With the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana in almost half of the states, practitioners need to be aware of the interface between marijuana and estate planning. This Article provides a discussion of the major issues that arise in this context. After bringing readers current with the history of legalized marijuana, the Article focuses on how marijuana use may impact a user’s capacity to execute a will and other estate planning documents. The Article then examines other estate planning concerns such as will and trust provisions conditioning benefits on the non-use of “illegal drugs” and the impact of marijuana use on life insurance policies. The Article wraps up with a discussion of how an estate planner may deal with marijuana-based assets when planning an estate and how to value those assets after the owner has died

When You Pass on, Don\u27t Leave the Passwords Behind: Planning for Digital Assets

The universe of digital assets is vast, including email accounts, picture and video storage sites, social networking sites, domain names, games and related sites; professional sites and backups; as well as online banking and business accounts. Moreover, digital assets go beyond online accounts to include your own personal or work computers, their hardware and software. If your clients are smart about their digital life, then they have numerous usernames, passwords, and security questions for their accounts. Trust and estates lawyers are increasingly helping to plan for the care of digital assets upon their client’s incapacity or death, providing advice concerning both the safekeeping of usernames and passwords and the disposition of the assets themselves. Each of these issues requires different techniques from the estate planning toolbox. Lawyers provide this planning for new clients, and they may often follow up with previous clients to ensure a periodic review of the disposition of these assets. This article discusses the reasons to engage in digital asset planning, the steps to plan for digital assets, the obstacles to planning for digital assets, and concludes by looking at what the future may hold