Brazil sets precedent on inheritance rights for digital assets

What happens to a person's social media accounts, audiovisual files, cryptocurrencies or NFTs when they die? Who decides what can — or cannot — be passed on as a digital inheritance? These increasingly pressing questions in the age of digital lives have now been addressed by Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice (STJ), the country’s second-highest judicial body.

A five-justice panel ruled that an external party — a “digital executor” — must examine and organize the deceased’s digital assets under a duty of confidentiality. Based on that review, a judge will then decide which items may be transferred to the estate.