Most estate plans address the obvious: the house, the bank accounts, the retirement funds. But a growing portion of people's financial and personal lives now exists online — in email inboxes, cloud storage, cryptocurrency wallets, online investment accounts, and subscription services. When those assets are left out of the estate plan, the family is often the one left to sort out the mess.
What Counts as a Digital Asset
Digital assets cover a wide range of accounts and files. Common examples include:
- Email accounts and cloud-based document storage
- Online banking and investment accounts not linked to beneficiary designations
- Cryptocurrency and digital wallets
- Business accounts, websites, or domain names with financial value
- Subscription services with ongoing payments or stored value
- Photos, videos, and other irreplaceable personal files stored online
Each of these may require separate access credentials, and without a plan, a family member may have no legal authority to access them — even if they are the rightful heir.
Why They Get Left Out
Digital assets are often excluded from estate plans simply because no one thinks to include them. Traditional estate planning documents were drafted before online accounts became central to daily life, and many people haven't revisited their plan since creating it years ago.
There's also a practical barrier: people are understandably reluctant to write down passwords or login credentials in a legal document. But there are ways to address access without compromising security during your lifetime.
What to Review and Plan For
A thoughtful review of digital assets for estate planning purposes involves three things:
- Inventory — identifying what important accounts and digital property exist
- Access planning — deciding who should be authorized to access each account, and how that access will be documented
- Coordination with existing documents — making sure your will, trust, or power of attorney addresses digital assets with sufficient authority for the named fiduciary to act
Does your estate plan reflect how you actually live today?
Call for a free consultation to make sure digital assets are covered in your plan.
Florida Law and Digital Assets
Florida has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which governs a fiduciary's ability to access digital accounts after incapacity or death. Under this law, the terms of service of an online platform can still restrict access — making it important that your estate planning documents explicitly grant authority over digital assets and that you follow the platform's own tools for designating a legacy contact or transfer-on-death beneficiary where available.
An estate planning attorney can help make sure your documents include the right language to give your fiduciary the legal authority they'll need.