By: John Gregory

The January 2013 issue of the <a href="http://www.carswell.com/DynamicData/ProductDocs/tableofcontents/toc-1487-3656.pdf" rel="nofollow">Estates, Trusts and Pensions Journal</a> has several articles on this topic. The Society of Estate Trustees and Practitioners (STEP) of Canada had a <a href="http://www.step.ca/programs.asp?b=Toronto" rel="nofollow">seminar in Toronto</a> in September 2012 exploring these issues: <blockquote>The speakers will discuss digital life after death and how digital assets need to be a part of your estate plan. Other commonly held myths on privacy rights being extinguished upon death of an individual and that an estate trustee may automatically assume the role of the deceased with respect to accessing digital estate assets. Cases will be referred to where relatives of the deceased had to apply to court to access the deceased’s digital estate assets because of the language of the site privacy policy. </blockquote> The work of the American Uniform Law Commission's drafting committee on the topic, noted in the previous comment, will soon be updated with material for its next meeting in mid-February 2013. The Uniform Law Conference of Canada has named two observers to the ULC's drafting committee.