Digital Executor®
Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning
by Sharon Hartung

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The world has gone digital and so have our clients’ estates. Digital assets may simply be electronic records, but they are the digital gateway to our lives. They are our memories, our money, and our records, making technology the new player at the estate planning table. The Digital Executor®: Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning arms estate advisors, business owners, service providers, and the broader estate and technology industries with heightened awareness of client expectations regarding their digital estates. Everyone needs a will and in today’s age of digitization, estate plans must include your client's digital life. This book is a primer for understanding a client’s personal use case when navigating estate management in the digital age with introductions to technology and the underlying aspects and differences between digital asset classes. With technology being the new player at the client’s estate planning table, estate advisors must be educated, motivated, and prepared, adapting policies and processes for operating in the digital world. Equally, technology and service providers must align with the stars to be integrated partners in estate industry conversations. Sharon’s first book, Your Digital Undertaker: Exploring Death in the Digital Age in Canada, was about digital assets in the context of an individual’s or client’s estate planning life cycle. This follow-up book, Digital Executor®: Unraveling the New Path for Estate Planning is about digital assets in the context of the estate industry. This book draws the reader into the world of estate planning with a digital twist, bringing together how the global estate industry, technology and service providers must address client expectations about their digital assets and the implications of the changing role of the fiduciary/executor. To understand the role of digital assets in the estate industry, we must first understand technology, the client’s user context, and the changing role of the estate advisor. From an estate industry perspective, if today’s executor is a digital executor and today’s fiduciary is a digital fiduciary, then today’s advisor must be a digital advisor.

www.yourdigitalundertaker.com

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Sharon Hartung, Captain (Ret'd), PEng, MSc, BEng, PMP®, CD, TEP, rmc, is the founder of Your Digital Undertaker®. With an extensive track record in IT management, project management, and consulting, she brings a multi-disciplinary approach to better understanding the role of managing digital assets in estate planning and estate administration. Sharon has built and maintained large enterprise systems for public sector and financial clients, starting as an aerospace engineering officer with the Royal Canadian Air Force before retiring as a Captain. Joining IBM Global Services, Sharon spent her career as an executive and consultant in project management. Sharon was awarded an IBM First Patent Invention Achievement Award for “Real-Time Continuous Realignment of a Large-Scale Distribution Project.” Sharon holds an MSc in Management of Information Systems, has Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification, and is a professional engineer. Sharon is a Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) member, has served as a committee member on both the STEP Digital Assets Special Interest Group and the STEP Global Thought Leadership Team: Digital Assets. Her first book, Your Digital Undertaker: Exploring Death in the Digital Age in Canada, was published in 2019.

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Contributors

Author

Sharon Hartung

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