Buzz
No matter how many times sci-fi films show it, we won’t be uploading our consciousness to the cloud to live forever anytime soon.
That doesn’t mean your presence won’t linger online. If you have a website or blog, it could persist as long as the hosting provider remains active and your payments are up to date, offering a glimpse of digital immortality. But what happens to your domain when you're no longer around to manage it? Can you pass down your slice of the web like a physical asset? We did some research and here’s what we discovered.
What happens if you do nothing?
If you don’t make any arrangements for someone to inherit your domain after your passing, it will eventually expire. The hosting service will try to contact you for renewal when the time comes, and if there’s no response, your domain enters a grace period, followed by a redemption phase (only the original registrar can reactivate it during this time). Ultimately, it will be deleted and available for anyone else to claim.
This may not be a major concern if your website was merely a hobby or lacked lasting significance. However, if your domain is linked to a profitable site or one that attracts substantial traffic, it would be wise to pass it on to someone else.
Plan for your passing
This can be as straightforward as sharing your domain login details with a trusted individual. To make it official, you can collaborate with an estate planning attorney to release these credentials, alongside instructions for what should be done with your domain after you’re gone. With your username and password, the person inheriting your domain can easily maintain and update it per your wishes.
The legal document you create should also grant your designated representative full authority to access your domain account and make any necessary changes to keep the site running smoothly.
By the way, this approach is not only useful for your domain but for all your digital assets. Compiling a list of your account passwords and logins can simplify your estate settlement for the executor of your will after you’ve passed. To streamline this, consider using a password manager app like LastPass or 1Password. This way, you can keep your credentials updated within the app and provide access at the time of your death by sharing just one master username and password.
Alternative Plan B
In the event you don't specify your domain in your will or pass away before doing so, there’s still a possibility for your family to claim it. The process differs by registrar, so anyone trying to inherit the domain will need to perform a WHOIS lookup to identify the registrar and follow their procedure for transferring ownership.
GoDaddy, for instance, mandates that the person attempting to take control of a domain after its owner’s passing submits a death certificate, a valid photo ID, a change request form, and confirmation that they are the estate administrator. Additionally, if the domain was registered to a business, a government-issued business identification document must be provided.
While it may seem inconvenient to secure the future of your domain after death, it's a valuable step for your heirs. Take into account that the domain name Fiona.com was sold for $75,000 in 2019, a significant amount for any beneficiary, making the effort to protect it worthwhile.
