You May Have More Assets Than You Think
The assets hiding in plain sight that could matter to your estate and your loved ones
When people hear the word “assets,” they usually think about the obvious things: a house, a bank account, an investment portfolio, a retirement account, or a car.
Estate planning, however, can involve a much broader definition of what you own.
Some things have clear financial value. Others may have little monetary value but significant practical, personal, or sentimental value. Some can be surprisingly difficult for your family to find after you're gone.
And some may not feel like assets at all.
What Counts as an Asset?
At its simplest, an asset is something you own that has value or provides a benefit. That value doesn't necessarily have to appear on a balance sheet.
A domain name can be an asset. So can a collection of airline miles, a small business interest, a royalty payment you are entitled to receive, or an uncashed check.
A collection of photographs may have little resale value but enormous personal importance. A social-media account may be personal, commercial, or both. A voice recording may be a family keepsake today and potentially have licensing value tomorrow.
The challenge is that many of these things aren't stored together, and there may be no obvious record telling your family that they exist.
Here are some of the categories worth thinking about.
Digital Assets
Our digital lives have created an enormous category of property that previous generations didn't have to consider.
Consider:
Domain names
Websites and blogs
Social media accounts
YouTube or other creator accounts
Digital storefronts
Online businesses
Digital photographs and videos
Cryptocurrency and digital wallets
Digital collectibles
Software and digital intellectual property
Online accounts that generate revenue
Digital files and creative work
Not every digital account is legally transferable, and some are simply personal accounts rather than property. But that distinction is exactly why they should be identified and documented.
A family can't make an informed decision about something they don't know exists.
Your Name, Voice, Image, and Likeness
There is another category of potential assets that has become increasingly important in the age of AI: rights associated with your identity.
For actors, musicians, influencers, athletes, executives, and other public figures, a name, photograph, voice, or likeness can have obvious commercial value.
AI is expanding the possibilities considerably.
A person's voice can potentially be recreated. Their appearance can be digitally generated. Photographs can be used to create new images. A person's likeness can potentially appear in advertising, entertainment, or other commercial content without the person physically participating.
This is no longer merely a hypothetical concern. In a 2024 global consumer study by Jumio, 60% of respondents said they had encountered a deepfake within the previous year. The study surveyed more than 8,000 adults across the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, and Mexico.
The growing ability to recreate a person digitally raises an estate-planning question that previous generations rarely had to consider:
Who controls your identity after you're gone?
The legal rights involved can vary significantly depending on the jurisdiction and circumstances. They can include publicity rights, copyrights in photographs, recordings, or other creative works, trademarks, contractual rights, and other intellectual-property interests.
It is important to distinguish these rights. Your name, voice, or likeness is not automatically protected by copyright simply because it is yours. Publicity rights, privacy laws, copyright, trademark law, and contracts may each address different aspects of how your identity or creative work can be used.
In California, for example, state law provides postmortem protections for certain uses of a deceased person's name, voice, signature, photograph, and likeness.
The issue is becoming important enough to attract attention from lawmakers and regulators. In 2024, the U.S. Copyright Office recommended that Congress establish a federal law addressing unauthorized digital replicas, describing the issue as a concern not only for public figures, but also for private citizens.
Public attitudes reflect that concern. A 2025 Boston University/Ipsos survey found that 84% of Americans surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that individuals should be protected from unauthorized AI-generated replicas of their voice and visual likeness. The same survey found that 75% supported a right to license their voice and likeness for AI training while retaining control over how their digital identity is used.
For someone whose identity has commercial value, an estate plan may therefore need to address more than physical property and financial accounts.
It may need to address:
Who can authorize commercial uses of your name and likeness
Who controls existing photographs, recordings, and other creative work
Whether your voice can be licensed after your death
What happens to contracts involving your image, voice, or personal brand
Whether an AI-generated version of you can be created or used
Who can approve or reject AI-generated uses of your likeness
Whether your identity can be used for endorsements or advertising
Who owns the copyrights in creative works you produced
Whether existing licenses continue after your death
AI makes these questions increasingly relevant because recreating someone's voice or appearance is becoming easier and more commercially useful.
Your voice recording might once have been simply a family keepsake. Today, it could potentially have licensing or other commercial value.
Your photographs might be personal memories. They might also contain commercially valuable intellectual property.
Your social-media presence might be personal. It could also represent a brand, an audience, or an ongoing source of revenue.
For some people, rights associated with their identity could become an important part of their estate.
Points, Miles, and Rewards
You might not think of your airline miles or credit-card points as an asset.
Depending on the program's rules, they may have value, even if that value can't necessarily be transferred to someone else after your death.
The same can apply to:
Airline miles
Hotel points
Credit-card rewards
Retail loyalty points
Cash-back balances
Gaming credits
Gift-card balances
Whether these benefits can be inherited or transferred varies by program. Still, leaving a record of them can help your family understand what you had and determine what, if anything, can be recovered.
Insurance Policies
Life insurance is an obvious financial asset once you think about it, but policies are surprisingly easy to overlook, particularly when they were obtained through an employer years ago.
There may also be other types of insurance or benefits worth documenting, including policies connected to a mortgage, business, or other financial obligation.
The important information isn't simply that a policy exists. Your family may need to know the insurer, policy number, coverage amount, beneficiaries, and where the relevant documents are located.
Things You Are Owed
An asset doesn't have to be sitting in your bank account yet.
You might be owed:
An unpaid invoice
A reimbursement
A security deposit
A tax refund
An uncashed check
A commission
A royalty
A loan repayment
Money from a legal settlement
A business payment
These are easy to overlook because they don't necessarily look or feel like property you currently own. But if someone owes you money, that potential payment can be relevant to your estate.
Business Interests
A side business can be an asset even if you don't think of yourself as a business owner.
You might own:
An LLC or corporation
A percentage of a partnership
Stock in a private company
A small online business
A consulting practice
A rental business
Intellectual property
A trademark
A patent
A royalty stream
A domain associated with a business
For entrepreneurs, the business itself may be one of the largest assets in an estate. But even a small ownership interest can matter.
Your family may also need to know about contracts, outstanding payments, business accounts, and other obligations associated with it.
Intellectual Property
If you create things, you may own rights that have value long after you stop actively using them.
That might include copyrights, trademarks, patents, books, photographs, music, artwork, software, designs, or other creative work.
There can also be future income associated with those rights.
For someone who has spent years creating content, building a brand, or developing products, intellectual property can be a meaningful part of an estate even if it never appears on a conventional personal balance sheet.
And increasingly, intellectual property overlaps with digital identity. A creator might own the copyright to their work while also having valuable rights associated with their name, image, or personal brand.
Collections and Valuable Belongings
Some assets are valuable because someone is willing to pay for them.
That could include:
Jewelry
Watches
Artwork
Antiques
Coins
Stamps
Wine
Musical instruments
Sports memorabilia
Designer goods
Collectibles
Rare books
Furniture
Other belongings may not have much resale value at all, but they can have enormous sentimental value.
A handwritten letter, family photograph, home video, or childhood keepsake might be worth almost nothing financially and everything to the person who inherits it.
An estate inventory can account for both.
Real Estate That Isn't Your Home
Your primary residence is easy to remember. Other property can be easier to miss.
You might have:
A vacation property
Rental property
Undeveloped land
Mineral rights
Timber rights
Timeshare interests
A partial ownership interest in property
Property held through an LLC or partnership
And sometimes the important question isn't simply what property you own, but how you own it.
Ownership through a trust, LLC, partnership, or another structure can affect what happens to the asset and who has authority over it.
Accounts That Don't Look Like Investments
People often remember their checking and savings accounts while forgetting accounts that were opened years ago and rarely used.
There could be:
Old savings accounts
Brokerage accounts
Certificates of deposit
Health or flexible spending balances
Education savings accounts
Employer stock
Deferred compensation
Pension benefits
Retirement accounts from previous employers
Changing jobs over the course of a career can leave behind a trail of financial accounts.
The Things That Aren't Technically Assets
There is another important side to this exercise. Not everything worth documenting is technically an asset.
Your estate plan may also need to address things that have no financial value but can create significant confusion for your family.
That includes the location of important documents, instructions for pets, information about recurring bills, digital account information, funeral preferences, personal messages, and the location of valuable or meaningful belongings.
These things may not appear on a financial statement, but can be essential to settling an estate.
The Problem Isn't Always Ownership. It's Discoverability.
One of the biggest challenges after someone dies isn't necessarily determining what their assets are worth.
It can be figuring out what exists in the first place.
A family member may know about the house but not the old retirement account.
They may know about the bank account but not the cryptocurrency wallet. They may know about the business but not the domain name that generates revenue.
They may find the jewelry but have no idea which pieces were intended for which family members.
And increasingly, they may have no idea that the person had valuable intellectual property, a monetized online presence, or rights associated with their name, voice, or likeness.
The more fragmented your financial and digital life becomes, the harder it can be for someone else to reconstruct it.
Think Beyond the Balance Sheet
A useful estate inventory isn't simply a list of things worth money, but a record of the things that matter.
That means looking beyond your house and bank accounts and asking:
What do I own?
What am I owed?
What generates income?
What intellectual property do I control?
What rights are associated with my name, image, voice, or likeness?
What digital accounts or businesses have value?
What has financial value?
What has sentimental value?
What would my family have trouble finding without me?
What would I want someone to know about it?
You may discover that your estate is considerably more complicated than you thought.
The modern estate isn't limited to houses, bank accounts, and investments. It can include digital property, businesses, intellectual property, personal identity rights, online income, rewards, creative work, and things that have value only to the people who know why they matter.
Making that complexity visible while you're alive can make things considerably easier for the people who eventually have to sort it out.
