Digital assets are the online accounts, files, and electronic records you own or control, from email and cloud photos to cryptocurrency, domain names, and loyalty points. In Florida, including them in your estate plan means giving your personal representative, trustee, or agent the legal authority and the practical access to find, manage, and distribute those assets after you die or become incapacitated. Without that authority, even a well-drafted will can leave your family locked out of accounts they did not know existed.
I have sat across the table from too many adult children who could describe their late parent’s homestead down to the orange tree in the backyard, but had no idea their mother had three email accounts, a Coinbase wallet, and a small Etsy shop. The house was easy to handle. The digital life was a black box. Florida law has caught up to this problem, but the law only works if your documents are written to use it.
What counts as a digital asset under Florida law
Florida adopted the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified at Chapter 740, Florida Statutes, which took effect in 2016. The statute is Florida’s version of the model law commonly called RUFADAA (the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act). It defines a digital asset broadly as an electronic record in which you have a right or interest. That is wide enough to cover almost everything you touch online.
In practice, the digital assets I see most often in Florida estates fall into a handful of categories:
- Financial accounts: online banking, brokerage logins, PayPal, Venmo, and cryptocurrency held on exchanges or in private wallets.
- Communications: email accounts, text-message archives, and messaging apps that often hold the keys to everything else through password resets.
- Stored content: cloud photos, Google Drive or Dropbox files, and digital media libraries.
- Income-producing or business assets: domain names, websites, e-commerce shops, monetized YouTube channels, and online advertising accounts.
- Loyalty and rewards: airline miles, hotel points, and credit-card rewards, some of which are transferable at death and some of which are not.
- Subscriptions and recurring bills: streaming services, software licenses, and auto-renewing memberships that quietly drain a bank account for months after death.
One important distinction: Chapter 740 governs access to the asset, not always the content of communications. The law treats the catalog of an email account (who you emailed, and when) differently from the actual content of those messages. Content gets stronger privacy protection and usually requires your specific consent before a fiduciary can read it. That nuance matters when you draft.
Why a will alone does not unlock your accounts
Here is the trap. A Florida will can say your personal representative inherits “all of my property, tangible and intangible.” That language passes ownership. It does not, by itself, give a service provider like Google, Apple, or a crypto exchange permission to hand over access. Those companies operate under their own terms-of-service agreements and under federal privacy laws such as the Stored Communications Act, which can criminalize unauthorized access to electronic communications. A provider that is unsure of its legal footing will default to saying no.
Chapter 740 creates a clear order of priority that controls who wins:
- An online tool offered by the provider itself. If a platform lets you name a person to manage or close your account, that choice overrides everything else, including your will. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Apple’s Legacy Contact are the two most common examples.
- Your estate-planning documents. If you did not use an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, or power of attorney control.
- The provider’s terms of service. If you left no instructions anywhere, the default contract decides, and the default is usually unfavorable to your family.
This priority ladder is the single most important thing to understand. The setting you click inside an app at 11 p.m. can quietly trump the will you paid a lawyer to draft. That is why digital-asset planning is part document drafting and part account housekeeping. Both have to line up.
Drafting your documents to grant digital authority
To make Chapter 740 work for you, three core documents need explicit digital-asset language. Generic boilerplate is not enough, because the statute rewards specificity, especially when it comes to the content of communications.
Your last will and testament
Your will should name your personal representative and grant that person express authority to access, manage, distribute, and dispose of your digital assets, including the content of electronic communications. Without the words about content, your representative may get only the catalog and not the messages. If you have not reviewed your Florida will since before 2016, assume it is silent on this and needs an update.
Your durable power of attorney
Incapacity is more common than death in the day-to-day work of estate planning, and a power of attorney is what governs while you are alive but unable to act. Under Florida’s Power of Attorney Act, Chapter 709, certain powers must be specifically enumerated and initialed by the principal. Authority over digital assets belongs in that category. A durable power of attorney that simply lists “all financial powers” may not be enough to convince a tech company to grant your agent access.
Your revocable living trust
If you hold your Florida homestead or other real estate in a revocable trust to streamline administration, your trustee should have parallel digital-asset authority. This is also where I often park instructions for crypto and other higher-value digital holdings, because a trust keeps those details out of the public probate record. For homestead-focused owners who already use a trust to handle the house, folding digital assets into the same instrument is a small, sensible addition. If you are weighing whether a trust fits your situation, the team at walks clients through the tradeoffs in plain language.
The practical access problem: an inventory and a plan
Legal authority gets you nothing if your family cannot find the accounts. I have watched a personal representative with airtight documents spend months guessing at the existence of accounts because the deceased never wrote anything down. The solution is a living inventory you maintain separately from the will itself.
A good digital-asset inventory includes:
- A list of accounts and platforms, by category, without storing raw passwords in the will (your will becomes a public record once it is filed for probate).
- The location of a password manager and how your fiduciary can reach the master credentials.
- Specific notes for anything that cannot be recovered by resetting an email, above all cryptocurrency. A self-custodied wallet protected only by a seed phrase you carried in your head dies with you. There is no help desk for a lost seed phrase.
- Instructions for accounts you want closed or memorialized, such as social media profiles.
- The names of any beneficiaries already attached to accounts, so the plan does not accidentally contradict itself.
Keep this inventory current. Digital lives change faster than wills do. I tell clients to revisit the list every time they would change a smoke-detector battery, which is at least once a year.
Special concerns for South Florida homeowners and families
Real estate is rarely the hard part of a Florida estate. The homestead is well documented, the deed is recorded, and Florida’s constitutional homestead protections guide the rest. The hidden friction now lives online. A few situations come up repeatedly with our South Florida clients.
Property-related logins. Many homeowners run their household through online portals: the county property-appraiser account, the homeowners-association payment portal, a smart-home or security system, and autopay for property taxes and insurance. When the owner dies, those logins can be as important to a smooth administration as the deed itself. Lose access to the security system and you may be physically locked out of the very homestead you inherited.
Snowbirds and out-of-state ties. Many Florida retirees still hold accounts opened in New York or another former home state, and family decision-makers are sometimes spread across state lines. Coordinating a plan that respects both Florida law and a relative’s situation elsewhere takes some care. Clients with northern roots and elder-care questions often consult resources like alongside their Florida planning.
Blended families and privacy. Digital assets can expose private correspondence at exactly the wrong moment. Deciding in advance who may read the content of communications, and who may only manage and close accounts, prevents painful surprises during an already difficult time.
Coordinating digital planning with probate and trust administration
When an estate does go through Florida probate, the personal representative’s authority over digital assets flows from the letters of administration the court issues, backed by the will’s grant of power. A provider that resists informally will usually respond to a court order or to letters that cite Chapter 740. The smoother path, though, is to never need the fight: an online tool already set, documents already drafted, and an inventory already written.
For families who plan well, the digital side of an estate becomes a checklist rather than a crisis. For everyone else, it becomes a scavenger hunt run under grief and a court deadline. The difference is a few hours of preparation while you are healthy. Our Florida attorneys handle this work as part of comprehensive , and we are glad to fold digital assets into a plan you may have started years ago.
If you are ready to update your documents or build a digital-asset inventory that actually works, reach out to our office to start the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my Florida will give my family access to my online accounts?
Not automatically. A will passes ownership of digital assets, but service providers operate under their own terms of service and federal privacy laws. To grant real access, your will should expressly authorize your personal representative to manage your digital assets and the content of electronic communications, as recognized under Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes. An online tool set with the provider, like Google Inactive Account Manager or Apple Legacy Contact, takes priority even over your will.
What is Florida's law on digital assets in estate planning?
Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, in Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes (effective 2016), is the state’s version of RUFADAA. It lets you authorize a personal representative, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney to access and manage your digital assets, and it sets a priority order: an online tool offered by the provider controls first, then your estate documents, then the provider’s terms of service.
How should I handle cryptocurrency in my estate plan?
Cryptocurrency needs extra care because access often depends on a private key or seed phrase that cannot be recovered if it is lost. Document where the wallet and recovery information are stored, without putting raw keys in your will, since a filed will becomes public record. Many clients place crypto details in a revocable trust for privacy and give the trustee explicit authority over digital assets.
Do I need to update an older Florida estate plan for digital assets?
Usually yes. Wills, trusts, and powers of attorney drafted before 2016 are typically silent on digital assets, which can leave your fiduciary without clear authority. Florida’s power of attorney law also requires certain powers to be specifically enumerated and initialed, so digital-asset authority should be added expressly rather than assumed under a general grant of financial powers.
What is a digital asset inventory and why do I need one?
A digital asset inventory is a maintained list of your online accounts, platforms, and where your fiduciary can find access information such as a password manager’s master credentials. It is kept separate from your will so it does not become public during probate. The inventory solves the practical problem that legal authority is useless if your family cannot even discover which accounts exist.
