Digital assets are the electronic records you own or control online — email, photos stored in the cloud, bank and brokerage logins, cryptocurrency, frequent-flyer miles, social media accounts, and domain names. In a Florida estate plan, including these assets means granting your personal representative, trustee, or agent the legal authority to access, manage, and distribute them, primarily under Florida’s adoption of the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes). Without that explicit authority, federal privacy law and the terms-of-service agreements you clicked “agree” to years ago can lock your family out of accounts they badly need to reach.
I have sat across the table from too many grieving Palm Beach families who could produce a death certificate and a will but still couldn’t get into a parent’s email — the one place where every other password reset, every utility bill, and every brokerage notice landed. The estate plan was solid on the house and the IRAs. It said nothing about the digital life. This article walks through how Florida law treats online accounts and what a snowbird or retiree should actually do about it.
Why digital assets get overlooked in a traditional estate plan
Most wills and trusts were drafted to move tangible things and titled accounts: real property, the condo, the boat, bank and investment accounts, life insurance. Digital assets don’t fit neatly into any of those boxes. You may “own” the content of your photo library, but you only license access to the platform that stores it. You control your brokerage login, but the brokerage account itself is a financial asset governed by its own beneficiary designation.
That split — between the asset and the access — is the heart of the problem. Florida law and the account providers care a great deal about who is allowed to log in, even when there’s no dispute about who inherits the value inside.
The seasonal-resident wrinkle
Snowbirds carry an extra layer of complication. If you spend winters in Palm Beach and summers up north, your “digital footprint” is genuinely bi-coastal: a New York bank, a Florida homestead, cloud storage syncing across two homes, maybe a brokerage you opened decades ago in another state. Establishing Florida domicile matters for your overall plan, and it matters here too — the law that governs fiduciary access generally follows the state where the estate is administered. For most of my clients who have made Florida their permanent home, that means Chapter 740 controls.
How Florida law actually governs access: Chapter 740
Florida adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) effective July 1, 2016. It lives in Chapter 740, Florida Statutes, and it creates a clear hierarchy for who decides what happens to your accounts. Understanding the order of priority is the single most useful thing in this article, so here it is:
- An online tool. If a provider offers a built-in feature to name someone to manage your account after death or incapacity, and you use it, that choice controls — even over your will. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Legacy Contact are the common examples.
- Your estate planning documents. If you didn’t use an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, or durable power of attorney govern — provided those documents grant your fiduciary authority over digital assets.
- The provider’s terms-of-service agreement. If you’ve done neither of the above, the fine print you accepted at signup decides, and that fine print frequently says the account is non-transferable and dies with you.
The practical lesson is that silence is a decision — and usually the worst one. If your documents say nothing and you never set up an online tool, your family inherits the terms of service, not control.
Catalogue versus content
Chapter 740 draws an important distinction that surprises people. Without specific consent, a fiduciary may generally obtain the catalogue of electronic communications — essentially a log showing that messages were sent and received, with addresses and timestamps — but not the content of those messages. To unlock the actual content of emails and texts, your documents (or the online tool) must expressly authorize disclosure of content. A well-drafted Florida plan says so in plain language.
Where the federal privacy laws come in
Two federal statutes lurk behind every locked account. The Stored Communications Act (part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) bars providers from disclosing the content of communications without lawful consent, which is exactly why Chapter 740’s consent provisions matter. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act can turn unauthorized account access into a federal offense — so the well-meaning relative who “just logs in with mom’s password” is, technically, on shaky ground. These laws are the reason you cannot simply hand a list of passwords to your kids and call it a plan. Authority has to be granted the way the statutes recognize.
Building digital assets into your Florida documents
A complete plan addresses access during incapacity and after death, because those are governed by different documents and different fiduciaries.
Your durable power of attorney
Under Chapter 740, an agent acting under a Florida durable power of attorney has access to digital assets only if the instrument grants it. If you become incapacitated, your agent may need to pay bills routed to an email inbox, manage an online brokerage, or suspend subscriptions. A power of attorney that predates 2016 almost certainly lacks the language to do any of this. This is one of the most common gaps I find in plans clients bring in for review.
Your will and your trust
Your will should authorize your personal representative to access and manage your digital assets, including the content of communications, and your revocable trust should give your trustee the same power over any digital assets you’ve placed in trust or that the trustee administers. Naming the authority explicitly avoids the catalogue-only limitation discussed above. If you want to compare how trusts handle long-term management of assets, this overview of is a useful starting point, and families planning for a loved one with a disability should look closely at a properly structured so that digital and financial assets don’t accidentally disqualify a beneficiary from public benefits.
A separate digital asset inventory and authorization
Beyond the formal documents, I have clients keep a living inventory — not stored inside the will, where it would become a public record after probate. It should list the categories of accounts and where access information is stored (a reputable password manager, a sealed letter in the safe deposit box), but never list raw passwords in the will itself.
- Financial: online banking, brokerage and retirement portals, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle.
- Cryptocurrency and digital wallets: exchange logins and, critically, the location of any private keys or seed phrases — lose these and the asset is gone forever, with no customer service line to call.
- Communications: primary and secondary email, which often holds the keys to everything else.
- Cloud storage and photos: Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox — the sentimental assets families fight hardest to recover.
- Loyalty and stored value: airline miles, hotel points, and gift-card balances, some of which are transferable at death.
- Identity and online presence: social media, domain names, and any income-producing accounts.
Practical steps for Palm Beach retirees and snowbirds
Here is the short list I give clients before we sit down to draft:
- Set up the provider online tools now — Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Legacy Contact take ten minutes and legally outrank your will.
- Confirm your durable power of attorney, will, and trust all contain Chapter 740 digital-asset language, including authority over the content of communications.
- Use a password manager with an emergency-access feature rather than a paper list that goes stale.
- For cryptocurrency, document where the keys live and make sure a trusted fiduciary can actually find them.
- Review the plan after any major platform change or after you formally shift your domicile to Florida.
If you keep assets and accounts in more than one state — the classic snowbird situation — coordinate your Florida documents with any out-of-state holdings so a single, consistent set of instructions controls. Our handles exactly this kind of cross-border cleanup, and you can read more about the surrounding documents on our wills page and what happens if you don’t plan on our Florida probate overview.
What happens if you do nothing
If you leave digital assets out of your plan, your personal representative may have to petition the Palm Beach County probate court for an order directing a provider to grant access — assuming the provider cooperates at all. Some do; many drag their feet behind the terms of service. Months pass. Subscription charges keep hitting the estate. Photos and correspondence with real sentimental value sit behind a login no one can lawfully open. None of that is necessary. A few paragraphs of the right language, drafted now, prevents nearly all of it.
Digital assets aren’t a niche concern anymore — they’re where a meaningful slice of your wealth and nearly all of your records now live. Treat them with the same seriousness as the condo and the brokerage account, and your family will thank you. When you’re ready to review or update your plan, contact our Palm Beach office to make sure your online life is covered alongside everything else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I just leave a list of my passwords for my family in Florida?
It’s better than nothing, but it isn’t a substitute for legal authority. Under the federal Stored Communications Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, logging into someone else’s account without proper authorization can be unlawful even with the right password. Florida’s Chapter 740 is what actually grants your fiduciary the right to access digital assets, so your will, trust, and power of attorney should contain that language. Keep a password list in a secure manager as a practical tool, not as your legal plan.
Does my will control what happens to my Facebook or Google account?
Only if you haven’t used the provider’s own online tool. Florida follows a priority order: a platform’s built-in tool, such as Facebook’s Legacy Contact or Google’s Inactive Account Manager, overrides your will. If you never set up that tool, your will and trust govern, but only when they expressly grant authority over digital assets. If neither applies, the provider’s terms of service control, and those often end the account at death.
What law governs digital assets in a Florida estate plan?
Florida adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified in Chapter 740, Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2016. It sets the order of priority for who controls your accounts and distinguishes between access to the catalogue of communications versus the content. Federal privacy statutes, including the Stored Communications Act, work alongside it and are why explicit consent in your documents matters.
I spend winters in Palm Beach and summers up north. Which state's law applies?
Fiduciary access to digital assets generally follows the state where the estate is administered, which is typically your state of domicile. If you’ve made Florida your permanent home, Chapter 740 controls, but you should coordinate your Florida documents with any out-of-state accounts and confirm your domicile is properly established so a single, consistent set of instructions governs.
What happens to my cryptocurrency if I don't plan for it?
Cryptocurrency is uniquely unforgiving. There is no customer service line to recover a lost private key or seed phrase, so if your fiduciary can’t locate that information, the asset is effectively gone forever. Your plan should grant authority over digital wallets and exchange accounts and securely document where the keys are stored, without exposing them in the public probate record.
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