Handling Intellectual Property in an Estate or Divorce: A Practitioner's Guide to Identification, Valuation, Transfer, and Continuing Obligations
By Casey Scott McKay ·
This guide is for counsel administering an estate or advising in a divorce where intellectual property is among the assets. It proceeds in the order the work has to be done rather than the order a probate checklist would suggest. It begins with the urgent items lost by inaction within weeks, then with identification, because most of these assets are invisible until somebody looks. It covers verifying what the deceased actually owned, calculating and preserving the termination windows a will cannot redirect, and the publicity rights domicile question that determines whether an asset exists at all. The second half addresses redirecting income and reading the licences, valuation and its tax interaction, and the characterisation questions a divorce raises. It closes with the governance structures that prevent decades of deadlock, and with planning during life for incapacity as well as for death.
IP and Technology > IP and IT in Corporate Transactions | Guide | Published 20 May 2025 - Updated 4 June 2025 | Casey Scott McKay - marksy.us
Summary. This guide is for counsel administering an estate or advising in a divorce where intellectual property is among the assets. It begins with identification, because most of these assets are invisible until somebody looks and several are lost by inaction within months. It then covers verifying what the deceased actually owned, the deadlines that do not pause for probate, calculating and preserving termination windows, the publicity rights domicile question, redirecting income, valuation and its tax interaction, divorce characterisation, and the governance structures that prevent decades of deadlock among beneficiaries who want different things.
Keywords: estate IP administration · asset identification · ownership verification · termination window calculation · publicity rights domicile · patent maintenance · trademark continuity · royalty redirection · digital asset access · valuation of royalty streams · income in respect of a decedent · divorce characterisation · literary executor · governance structures · incapacity planning
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