justwords's picture
justwords from suburb of Birmingham, AL is reading The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson; A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby June 8, 2014 - 5:08pm

I heard a report on NPR today that brought up 2 subjects that I think everyone here should be aware of: (1) if you are saving your writing to the cloud or on your computer, or if you have used any social media in regard to your work, you should be aware of a legal aspect, should you (God forbid) die unexpectedly; and (2) if you die unexpectedly, you should let the person who will take care of all your personal matters, legal or otherwise, know where you keep your passwords and where your thumbdrives or (however you save your stuff) are.

Believe me, this will be hugely beneficial to those left behind. Yes, no one wants to think they'll die, sure we're all going to live forever, just like we think we're indestructible when we're kids and 20-somethings. 

There is a way that you can copyright your thoughts and works that are in the cloud, and there is a legal way to make anything you have in the cloud kept private and never revealed that you want to. This is very handy for social media as well. You may not be aware of how many deceased folks' stuff is still on Facebook; they don't do anything with it unless they are notified you have passed to the great beyond, and then they put up a memorial page, and it is legally impossible (according the report on NPR) for family or heirs to have access to that material unless you leave instruction to that effect. I might be getting some of the details wrong, but there's something like 300,000 accounts for dead folks on Facebook. That's a lot of hackable info.

Anyway, for what it's worth, check it out. I have had to deal with situation #2.... for an executor of a will, it's a huge headache, and the results could pretty much be something you don't want after you're gone.

And for those of you w/o wills, think about making one, ok?