Facebook Life After Death

In the age of social media people from all over the world have a Facebook page, detailing information about themselves, displaying personal photos and more often than not providing routine updates on their daily lives. But have you thought about what happens to your Facebook persona when you die?

The popular social media platform has recently rolled out the ‘Legacy Contact’ feature across Europe, which enables users to preserve their digital persona after death.

Previously only available in America, the feature allows a user to nominate a trusted contact to make minor changes to a profile and to memorialise the account post death. The Legacy Contact will be able to post a final notice to the ‘wall’ of the deceased to share memories or plans for a memorial service as well as respond to any new friend requests.

Crucially, the Legacy Contact will not have full access to the user’s private messages sent during their lifetime nor will they be able to edit any existing posts or comments. For further details on the Legacy Contact and how to set one up click here.

Whilst having a legacy contact is, on the face of it, a good idea, it is of limited value if your chosen contact is unaware that they have been assigned the responsibility. Given that one of the primary aims of the option is to facilitate the arrangement of funeral or memorial services by utilising a pre-existing contact base it would seem sensible to allocate this role to the executors of a Will.

The role of executor does not extend to the closing of social media accounts, however, it is something that can be included within a Will, thus giving more explicit guidance on what the Legacy Contact should do with the Facebook account. With an ever growing reliance on social media and a digital persona this is a welcome move and something that we would encourage all clients to consider when providing instructions for their Will.

If you want to know more or require further guidance please contact Julia Furley via email at jfurley@jfhlaw.co.uk or by telephone on 0207 388 1658. And don’t forget that JFH are on Facebook so come and connect with us there too.

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Please note that the information contained in this article was correct at the time of writing. There may have been updates to the law since the article was written, which may affect the information and advice given therein.