Including Digital Assets in Your Palm Beach, FL Estate Plan

When a Palm Beach woman named Elena passed away, her family could not access her cloud photo library of decades of memories, could not close her email, and discovered she had owned cryptocurrency that no one could find. Her traditional will said nothing about any of it. Digital assets are now part of nearly every estate, and Florida has a specific law for handling them.

What Counts as a Digital Asset

Digital assets include far more than money. Think of:

• Email and social media accounts
• Cloud-stored photos, videos, and documents
• Cryptocurrency and online brokerage logins
• Online banking, PayPal, and rewards or airline-mile accounts
• Domain names, blogs, and any online business or storefront
• Subscription and loyalty accounts

Some have real financial value; others, like family photos, are priceless in a different way. All can be lost forever if no one can reach them.

Florida’s Digital Assets Law

Florida adopted the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740). It gives your fiduciaries, your personal representative, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney, a legal pathway to access and manage your digital assets, but with an important order of priority. An online tool offered by the platform itself (such as a legacy contact or inactive-account manager) controls first. If you have not used such a tool, your estate planning documents control next. Only if neither exists do the provider’s terms of service apply, which often means no access at all.

The lesson for Palm Beach families: silence is the worst outcome. You must affirmatively grant access, either through each platform’s tools or, more reliably, in your documents.

Build Digital Access Into Your Documents

Coordinate your plan so your fiduciaries have clear authority:

• Will: Authorize your personal representative to access digital assets under Chapter 740.
• Durable power of attorney: Under Florida’s power of attorney law (Chapter 709), include specific language granting your agent authority over digital assets so they can act if you become incapacitated.
• Revocable trust: If you use a trust (Chapter 736), give your trustee the same authority for assets the trust holds or manages.

Practical Steps Beyond the Documents

Legal authority is only half the battle; your fiduciary still needs to find and reach the accounts. Maintain a current inventory of your digital assets, where they are held, and how they are secured. Store passwords in a reputable password manager rather than in your will (which can become a public record in probate). Use platform legacy tools where available, and never share private keys or seed phrases for cryptocurrency in an unsecured place. Update the inventory as you open or close accounts.

The Florida Tax Angle

Cryptocurrency and online accounts with value are part of your estate, but remember Florida has no state estate or inheritance tax. The practical challenge here is access and recovery, making sure your loved ones can actually locate and control these assets, not state death taxes.

Consult a Florida Attorney

Digital assets evolve quickly, and the right authority language matters. A Florida estate planning attorney can update your will, power of attorney, and trust to include Chapter 740 powers so your fiduciary can preserve both the valuable and the sentimental. This article is general information, not legal advice.