The Digital Age

The Digital Age pervades all aspects of life presenting many new legal concepts and challenges. At Wedlake Bell we advise on what the digital revolution means in practice for private individuals and businesses, and the tension between the free flow of information and the right to privacy.

DIGITAL ASSETS- protecting and managing your digital estate

We advise on the succession to, and taxation of, your digital assets, including crypto currencies and social media accounts. We advise on what action needs to be taken in your lifetime to manage your digital estate, how on-line contracts and licensing agreements dictate what you can and cannot do and how you can successfully enable your executors to control your digital profile and assets as you would like on death.

DATA PROTECTION

The use of information about living individuals, whether they are customers, suppliers or employees, is highly regulated. In particular, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) confers a number of rights upon individuals and imposes standards on businesses and other legal entities, including estates and trusts. The UK GDPR includes a range of sanctions for those that fail to comply with their obligations, including substantial fines. Our dedicated data protection team advises a broad range of organisations on their data protection compliance obligations as well as individuals whose rights have been infringed.  In addition we have established Pro DPO (www.prodpo.com).    Pro DPO provide an outsourced Data Protection Officer (DPO) to those businesses that are required to have a DPO by the GDPR. It relieves companies of the need to employ a full or part-time DPO, providing a very efficient, cost effective and secure way of keeping GDPR compliant.

TRUSTS AND ESTATES

We advise trustees and executors on their responsibilities arising from holding personal data on beneficiaries, settlors and testators, and their obligations and boundaries under general law and UK GDPR to protect this data. A number of regulations have been introduced to clamp down on international tax evasion and insider dealing, including Automatic Exchange of Information (“AEOI”) regimes such as the Common Reporting Standard (“CRS”), and the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”); the Legal Entity Identifier (“LEI”) rules and the completion of HM Revenue & Customs’ Trust Register. These compliance and information disclosure obligations risk putting details about estates and trusts into the public domain in the “interests” of transparency and are often at odds with the right to privacy. We advise on the privacy issues emanating from the myriad of regulations, the challenges these present to executors and trustees, and the steps to be taken to comply with these regulations whilst keeping private family structures private.

DATA ROOMS

We offer bespoke client data room facilities to allow the secure holding and sharing of data and documents with carefully managed access given to chosen members of the family and other professional advisers and interested parties where appropriate.