Digital assets and online accounts are the electronic property you own or control during life—everything from cryptocurrency and brokerage logins to email, cloud storage, domain names, loyalty points, and revenue-generating social media. In Florida, planning for them means giving a trusted person the legal authority to access, manage, and distribute these assets after your death or incapacity, using the powers granted under the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes). Without that authority spelled out in your documents, your family can be locked out by federal privacy law and the terms-of-service agreements you clicked through years ago.
I’ve sat across the table from too many surviving spouses who knew their late husband kept “everything” in a password manager—and had no idea how to open it. For high-net-worth families in South Florida, the stakes are rarely sentimental alone. A forgotten cold wallet, an unmanaged trading account, a domain portfolio quietly renewing on autopay—these are real dollars that vanish into a legal gray zone if you don’t plan deliberately.
What Counts as a Digital Asset in Florida?
Florida law defines a “digital asset” broadly: it’s an electronic record in which a person has a right or interest. That’s an intentionally wide net. The record itself is the asset, but the underlying value—the money, the intellectual property, the business—is what your plan actually protects.
For affluent clients, the inventory usually runs deeper than they expect. Consider what may be sitting in your digital estate right now:
- Cryptocurrency and tokenized assets—Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, NFTs, and the private keys or seed phrases that control them.
- Financial logins—brokerage accounts, online-only banks, payment apps, and accounts at fintech platforms that have no physical branch to call.
- Business and income assets—monetized YouTube or Instagram accounts, e-commerce stores, domain name portfolios, app store developer accounts, and online advertising revenue.
- Intellectual property—manuscripts, photography libraries, design files, code repositories, and licensed digital works.
- Loyalty and rewards—airline miles, hotel points, and credit card rewards, some of which are transferable on death and some of which are forfeited outright.
- Communication and storage—email accounts, cloud drives, and photo libraries that often hold the keys (literally) to everything else.
Notice the pattern. Email and cloud storage rarely have monetary value themselves, but they are frequently the gateway to two-factor authentication codes, account recovery, and password reset links. Lose access to the inbox and you may lose practical access to the brokerage account too.
Why Your Will Alone Won’t Solve This
Here’s the trap. A traditional Florida will can direct who inherits the value of a digital asset, but it does not, by itself, grant your personal representative the technical and legal right to log in. Two obstacles stand in the way.
First, federal law. The Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act make it a potential violation for someone to access another person’s account—even a deceased spouse’s—without authorization. Sharing a password doesn’t cure that; in fact, using a stored password without legal authority can itself breach the platform’s terms of service.
Second, the contracts. When you created that account, you agreed to a terms-of-service agreement that governs what happens at death. Some providers offer a built-in legacy tool. Many simply freeze or delete the account. Your will can’t override a contract your fiduciary was never a party to—but Florida’s RUFADAA framework can.
How Florida’s Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740) Works
Florida adopted its version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified at Chapter 740, Florida Statutes. It creates an order of priority that determines who controls your digital assets and how:
- Online tools first. If a platform provides its own legacy or inactive-account tool—and you used it to name someone—that designation controls, even over your will. This is the single most overlooked step in digital estate planning.
- Your estate documents second. If you didn’t use an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, or power of attorney govern—but only if those documents actually grant digital-asset authority.
- The terms-of-service agreement last. If you’ve done neither, the provider’s default contract controls, which often means no access at all.
Chapter 740 also draws a sharp line between the content of electronic communications (the body of your emails and messages) and the catalogue (the metadata—who you emailed, when, transaction logs). A fiduciary can generally reach the catalogue more easily; reaching content requires clear, specific consent. That distinction matters when drafting. Generic boilerplate may unlock the catalogue but leave the actual message content—and any account-recovery information inside it—out of reach.
This is precisely why the language in your documents has to be deliberate. A well-drafted estate plan expressly authorizes your fiduciary to access both the content and the catalogue, references Chapter 740 by name, and provides the consent that the Stored Communications Act demands.
Building Digital Authority Into Each Document
Power of Attorney
Incapacity often arrives before death. A durable power of attorney that specifically grants digital-asset authority lets your agent manage online accounts while you’re alive but unable to act. Florida powers of attorney must enumerate certain “superpowers” expressly—and digital-asset access belongs on that list. A generic POA executed before this area matured may be silent on the issue entirely.
Revocable Living Trust
For high-net-worth families, a funded revocable trust is usually the workhorse. Digital assets with real value—a domain portfolio, a monetized platform, an LLC’s online operations—can be assigned to the trust so a successor trustee steps in seamlessly, without probate exposure or public filings. If you’re weighing how trusts fit into your broader plan, our discussion of how trusts protect and transfer assets walks through the mechanics. For families managing a beneficiary with disabilities, coordinating digital income streams with a special needs trust can preserve means-tested benefits while still capturing that value.
Last Will and Testament
Your will should expressly grant your personal representative authority over digital assets under Chapter 740 and direct disposition of anything not held in trust. Even if most of your estate is trust-funded, the will is the catch-all for accounts you forgot to retitle. See our overview of Florida wills and what they cover for how this fits the larger plan.
The Practical Layer: A Secure, Living Inventory
Legal authority is only half the battle. Your fiduciary also needs to find the assets and physically access them. This is where I see well-drafted plans fail in practice.
Cryptocurrency is the classic example. If you hold assets in a hardware wallet and the seed phrase dies with you, there is no customer service line, no court order, no recovery process. The coins are gone—permanently. A trust can name your son as successor trustee with full Chapter 740 authority, and it won’t matter one bit if he can’t locate twelve words written on a card in a drawer.
So pair your documents with an organized, secure system:
- Maintain a digital asset inventory—an updated list of accounts, platforms, and asset types—without writing passwords into the will itself, since a probated will becomes a public record.
- Use a reputable password manager and ensure your fiduciary knows it exists and how emergency access is granted.
- Store cryptocurrency seed phrases and hardware wallet locations through a secure, separate channel—a fireproof safe, a bank box, or a layered access arrangement your attorney can structure.
- Set up the legacy and inactive-account tools that major email, social, and cloud providers offer. This takes minutes and overrides everything else under Chapter 740.
- Review the inventory at least annually. Digital lives change fast; a static list goes stale within a year.
Special Considerations for High-Net-Worth Florida Families
When digital assets carry serious value, a few issues deserve heightened attention. Valuation and tax: cryptocurrency and tokenized assets must be valued as of the date of death for estate tax and basis purposes, and volatile assets make timing and documentation critical. Business continuity: a monetized platform or e-commerce operation may need an operating fiduciary who can keep revenue flowing the day after you’re gone—not weeks later. Privacy and asset protection: holding digital businesses inside Florida LLCs or trusts shields ownership from the public probate docket and adds a creditor-protection layer that bare personal ownership never will.
Florida’s homestead and creditor-protection landscape is favorable, but those protections don’t automatically extend to a brokerage login or a wallet sitting in your personal name. Structure is what converts a vulnerable account into a protected asset. Our Florida team regularly integrates digital holdings into a complete plan—you can read more about our approach to Florida estate planning and then map out the right structure for your situation.
What Happens If You Do Nothing
Inaction has a predictable cost. Accounts get frozen. Heirs spend months and legal fees petitioning providers one at a time, sometimes with court orders, often unsuccessfully. Cryptocurrency becomes unrecoverable. Recurring subscriptions and domain renewals keep draining the estate. Monetized platforms go dark and lose their audiences—and their value—within weeks. And the most private parts of your digital life either sit exposed in litigation or get permanently deleted before anyone can preserve what mattered.
None of that is necessary. A focused afternoon—updating your documents, setting your legacy tools, and building a secure inventory—closes the gap. If you’re ready to bring your digital assets into a coordinated plan, reach out to our office to start the conversation. And if probate is already underway, our guide to the Florida probate process explains how a personal representative can pursue digital-asset access under Chapter 740.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are digital assets included in Florida probate? Yes—digital assets owned in your personal name without a beneficiary designation, trust, or platform legacy tool generally pass through Florida probate like other property. Assets held in a funded revocable trust avoid probate.
Can my executor legally access my email and online accounts in Florida? Only if you grant that authority. Under Chapter 740, your personal representative needs express consent in your will, trust, or power of attorney—or a platform legacy designation—to access account content lawfully.
What happens to my cryptocurrency if I die without sharing the private keys? It is typically lost forever. No court, attorney, or exchange can recover self-custodied crypto without the seed phrase or private key, which is why secure key storage is as important as the legal documents.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are digital assets included in Florida probate?
Yes. Digital assets owned in your personal name without a beneficiary designation, trust, or platform legacy tool generally pass through Florida probate like other property. Assets held in a properly funded revocable living trust avoid probate, which is why high-value digital holdings are often assigned to a trust.
Can my executor legally access my email and online accounts in Florida?
Only if you grant that authority. Under Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes), your personal representative needs express consent in your will, trust, or power of attorney, or a platform legacy designation, to lawfully access account content. A shared password alone is not enough and may even violate federal privacy law.
What happens to my cryptocurrency if I die without sharing the private keys?
It is typically lost forever. No court, attorney, or exchange can recover self-custodied cryptocurrency without the seed phrase or private key. That is why secure storage of keys and wallet locations is as important as the legal documents granting your fiduciary authority over the assets.
Do social media and email platforms have their own tools for naming someone after death?
Many do. Major email, social, and cloud providers offer legacy or inactive-account tools that let you designate someone to manage or close your account. Under Chapter 740, that online designation controls over your will, so setting it up is one of the most effective and overlooked steps in digital estate planning.
Should I list my passwords in my will?
No. A will admitted to Florida probate becomes a public record, so passwords or seed phrases written into it would be exposed. Instead, grant digital-asset authority in the will and keep credentials in a secure password manager or sealed inventory referenced by, but not contained in, your estate documents.