Estate Planning and Your Digital Life After Death

Written by Joseph Marchese

When thinking of building your estate plan you may think of creating a will, power of attorney, health care proxy, or even a trust. But in today’s digital world it is becoming increasingly important to also plan for what happens when you are gone.

Your online presence is more substantial than you may realize. Email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage, cryptocurrency wallets, streaming subscriptions, digital photos, domain names, loyalty points, online banking — all of it exists somewhere, and none of it automatically transfers to your heirs the way a typical beneficiary designated account might. Without a plan, your family may find themselves locked out of accounts they need, unaware of assets that have real monetary value, or, in some cases, watching your social media presence linger online indefinitely with no one authorized to manage it.

Here is what you need to know.

What Counts as a Digital Asset?

Digital assets fall into a few broad categories:

• Financial assets with real monetary value. This includes cryptocurrency, NFTs, PayPal or Venmo balances, unused gift card balances, online brokerage accounts, and accrued loyalty rewards. These are often overlooked in estate planning despite representing meaningful sums of money.
• Accounts and subscriptions. Email, cloud storage (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox), streaming services, and e-commerce accounts (Amazon, eBay seller accounts) may contain valuable content, stored financial information, or even ongoing revenue.
• Creative and intellectual property. Self-published ebooks, digital art, photography stored in the cloud, YouTube and social media accounts with monetization, and blogs or websites.
• Social media and communication accounts. Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and similar platforms each have their own policies for what happens to an account after the owner dies. Some allow for memorialization while others simply delete the account if not managed.
• Sentimental digital content. Photos, videos, and personal correspondence stored in the cloud are often the things your family will want most, and without proper planning, they may never be able to access any of it.
• Business-related digital assets. If you own or operate a business, your digital footprint likely extends well beyond personal accounts. Domain names tied to your business, SaaS platforms used for day-to-day operations, e-commerce storefronts, customer databases, cloud-based accounting systems, and business social media accounts may all require timely access by a successor. Without proper planning, your family or business partners may be unable to maintain operations or preserve goodwill during a critical transition period.
• Health and medical portals. Patient portals, digital health records, prescription management accounts, and health insurance logins are increasingly important, particularly for individuals managing ongoing medical conditions. Your fiduciary or health care agent may need access to this information to coordinate care decisions or manage claims, and most platforms do not provide a simple process for transferring access after death or incapacity.

The Legal Landscape: Why Access Is Not Automatic

Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Stored Communications Act it is a federal crime to access someone else’s electronic accounts without authorization, even with good intentions. This means that simply sharing your password with a trusted family member, while common, is technically a violation of most platforms’ terms of service and may not hold up legally.

New York State has also addressed this through the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which grants fiduciaries — Executors, Trustees, and agents under a Power of Attorney (only applicable during life) — the legal authority to manage digital assets, but only to the extent that you have authorized it in your estate planning documents. Without that express authorization, your fiduciaries may have very limited ability to access your accounts, even with a court order.

The practical takeaway: the law provides a framework, but it only works if your documents are drafted to take advantage of it.

What You Can Do Now

• Update your estate planning documents. Your will, trust, and power of attorney should each include language specifically authorizing your fiduciary to access, manage, transfer, or close digital accounts on your behalf. It is important to contact an experienced trust, estate, and elder law attorney to ensure that these digital modifications are included in your documents.
• Create a digital asset inventory. Prepare a written or encrypted list of your important accounts, the platforms they are on, with instructions for how to access them. This does not need to include actual passwords (and probably should not, for security reasons), but should identify what you have and where it lives. Store this inventory somewhere your Executor can find it such as a fireproof safe, a secure document with your attorney, or a reputable digital vault service.
• Use platform-designated tools where available. Google has an Inactive Account Manager that lets you designate what happens to your Google data if your account goes dormant. Facebook allows you to name a Legacy Contact who can manage your memorialized profile. Apple introduced a Digital Legacy program that lets you designate people to access your iCloud data after you die. These tools are free, easy to set up, and legally recognized, and most people have never used them.
• Address cryptocurrency carefully. If you hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrency, your heirs cannot access it without the private key or seed phrase. There is no customer service line. There is no court order that unlocks a blockchain wallet. If those credentials are lost, the assets are gone permanently. Work with your estate planning attorney on a secure method for passing this information on.
• Think through your social media wishes. Do you want your Facebook profile memorialized or deleted? Do you want someone to archive your Instagram photos? Would you prefer your LinkedIn account closed? These are decisions that need to be expressed to your Executor and estate planning attorney, and not left to your family to guess in the middle of grieving.

The Bigger Picture

Estate planning has always been about more than transferring assets. It is about giving your family clarity and control during one of the hardest times they will face. Your digital life is now a real and significant part of who you are and what you leave behind. A plan that ignores it is an incomplete plan.

The good news is that addressing your digital assets does not require starting over. In most cases, it means updating existing documents, creating a straightforward inventory, and spending about an hour setting up the platform tools that are already available to you.

If you have questions about incorporating digital asset planning into your estate plan, please reach out. It is a conversation worth having sooner rather than later.