Protect Your FarmVille Property From Beyond the Grave

Here’s a modern dilemma: You’re a Twitter power user. You spend years nurturing your feed, doling out little bon mots and sharing links to funny cat photos. Your follower count climbs to 1,000, then 10,000. You’re an influencer! All of a sudden, real life rears its ugly head. You’re run over by a bus, and your three children—all equally ambitious social media addicts—end up in a nasty feud over who deserves ownership of your carefully collected list of followers.

Hey, it could happen. At least according to Chas Rampenthal, the in-house counsel and legal life coach (yes, that’s his actual title) at LegalZoom, a company that helps people create legal documents online. Last month, LegalZoom added a section on protecting digital assets to its $69 Last Will & Testament package. The new section asks about a person’s various online accounts, be it a plot of virtual land in FarmVille, a shop on EBay, a Flickr page full of photos, or a LinkedIn account used to make business connections. Will-makers can then say which heirs get access to which accounts. “When you think about these digital assets, they are the types of things that are difficult to pick up and hand to someone,” says Rampenthal.