Who should serve as trustee of a trust?  Choices are usually family members or a corporate trustee from a bank or investment company.

I usually advise clients to look at their family members first, then use a corporate trustee if there is no one suitable.  However, I always try to dissuade my clients from naming one child as trustee of another child’s trust as a means of preserving family relationships post-death.  Grandparents can serve as trustee for the short term.  However, if the parents or grandparents are Michael and Dina Lohan, I always advise that the client use a corporate trustee.

Returning to post-death digital assets.  The web site Deceased Account assists families with closing on-line accounts of deceased family members.   The site summarizes the procedures of most major (and many minor or unheard of) on-line services.

If a surviving spouse discovers that the deceased spouse belonged to eHarmony, the account can be closed by a family member by simply stopping payment. Thankfully.  And indignantly.

An issue that seems more problematic in theory than practice is who inherits digital assets at death. Technically, the purchaser of digital content has acquired the “non-transferable” right to use the items.  Theoretically, there is no right to leave these assets to heirs and it is very difficult to distribute parts of these assets among various heirs (i.e. R.E.M. collection to daughter, Eminem songs to son).

The simple solution is to share the password so that the collection can continue to be accessed post-death on whatever devices the decedent used (i.e. Kindle, iPod).  Logistically, integrating an iTunes library into another library is very technically challenging and merits a visit to www.ilounge.com.

However, from a practical perspective, do children want their parent’s digital media and vice versa?  Growing up, my parents never had an album that interested me.  Looking back, I still see no need for a Ray Coniff Singers or Mitch Miller album in my collection.  Will others be worse off because they can not access a loved one’s Lady Gaga, Lil’ Wayne, or Black Eyed Peas collection?  Will family members want to watch Cars 2, Transformers, and any Pirates of the Caribbean movie in the future, not to mention episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Two and a Half Men?  I doubt it.  If I am right, perhaps Apple and Amazon are doing people a favor by not easing access to the digital content of deceased family members.

What happens to credit card debt at death? The general rule is that when a cardholder dies, the debt is paid from his own assets and a spouse is not liable for the bill. In Ohio, the credit card company has six months to file a claim against the estate. Otherwise the debt is not valid. If there are insufficient non-joint assets, the debt will go unpaid. This applies even if a spouse was an authorized user on the account (but does not use the account after death).

Beware of smooth talking debt collectors who will try to convince surviving family members that they should pay the debt of the deceased for moral reasons or to maintain the good name of the deceased. There is no legal reason to do so. Also, there is little moral in a business with 18% interest rates and punitive late fees.