Digital assets are the online accounts, files, and currencies you own or control electronically — email, photos stored in the cloud, social media profiles, crypto wallets, domain names, loyalty points, and the like. In Florida, you plan for them by combining clear instructions in your estate documents with the access rights granted under the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, found in Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes. Done right, that planning lets the people you trust find, manage, and close your accounts without fighting a tech company or a probate judge to do it.
For a first-time planner or a young family, this is often the piece nobody mentions until it’s too late. You may not own a vacation home or a portfolio of stocks yet, but you almost certainly have a phone full of irreplaceable photos, a primary email address that controls password resets for everything else, and maybe a brokerage app or a few hundred dollars in crypto. Those things don’t pass cleanly just because your will names an heir. Here’s how Florida law treats them and what you can actually do about it.
What Counts as a Digital Asset in Florida
People hear “digital asset” and think only of Bitcoin. The legal definition is much broader. Under Florida’s version of the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, a digital asset is essentially any electronic record in which you have a right or interest. That sweeps in a lot of ordinary life:
- Communications accounts — email, text and messaging history, voicemail transcripts.
- Financial accounts that live online — brokerage and banking apps, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App balances.
- Cryptocurrency and other tokens — held on exchanges like Coinbase or in self-custody wallets.
- Stored files and media — iCloud and Google Drive photos, documents, and backups.
- Social and content accounts — Facebook, Instagram, a YouTube channel, a blog.
- Accounts with real economic value — domain names, online businesses, e-commerce stores, airline miles and hotel points.
- Subscriptions and recurring services that quietly keep charging a card after death.
One distinction matters more than any other. Florida law separates the content of an electronic communication (the actual body of your emails and messages) from the catalogue of that communication (the record that an email was sent, to whom, and when). The catalogue is easier for a fiduciary to obtain. The content gets stronger privacy protection and usually requires that you affirmatively consented to disclosure. That single difference is why generic “give my executor everything” language often falls short.
Why a Florida Will Alone Doesn’t Solve This
Two things trip people up. First, you don’t truly “own” most online accounts — you hold a license to use them under a terms-of-service agreement. When you click “I agree,” you’re often agreeing that the account is non-transferable and that the company controls access. Second, federal privacy laws and computer-fraud statutes make custodians (Google, Apple, Meta) cautious about handing account access to anyone, even a grieving spouse, without clear legal authority.
So a will that says “I leave my property to my wife” doesn’t automatically authorize Apple to unlock your iCloud, and it doesn’t tell your personal representative whether they’re even allowed to read your inbox. Florida’s Chapter 740 is the bridge. It creates a priority order for how your wishes get honored, and the order is not what most people expect.
The Order of Authority Under Florida Law
The Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act sets up a clear hierarchy. Understanding it is the whole game:
- An online tool provided by the custodian wins first. If a service lets you name someone directly — like Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Apple’s Legacy Contact — the choice you make inside that tool overrides your will. This is the most overlooked planning step there is.
- Your estate documents come next. If you didn’t use an online tool, then the directions in your will, trust, or power of attorney control — and they can grant or restrict access to specific categories of assets.
- The terms-of-service agreement applies last. If you’ve done neither of the above, the provider’s default policy decides, and those defaults rarely favor your family.
Read that first item again. If you set a Google Legacy Contact and then sign a will saying your spouse gets your email, the Legacy Contact controls. The two need to agree. A good Florida estate plan reconciles your online tool settings with your written documents so they point in the same direction.
Giving Your Executor and Agent the Right Powers
Two roles handle your digital life: your personal representative (Florida’s term for an executor) after death, and your agent under a durable power of attorney while you’re alive but incapacitated. Both need explicit digital-asset language. Older form documents often don’t include it.
For the power of attorney, Florida law generally requires that broad or “superpowers” be specifically enumerated and separately initialed. Authority over digital assets and electronic communications should be spelled out, not assumed. The same goes for a trustee if you hold digital assets in a trust. When the powers are written clearly, a custodian is far more willing to cooperate; when they’re vague, you invite delay and denial.
This is also where consent to disclose the content of communications belongs. If you want your representative to be able to read your emails — say, to find a brokerage statement or cancel a subscription — the document should say so in plain terms. Silence is read as a “no.”
Special Situations Worth Planning For
Cryptocurrency and self-custody wallets
Crypto is unforgiving. If your private keys or seed phrase die with you, the coins are gone forever — no court order brings them back. Yet you should never write a seed phrase into your will, because a probated will becomes a public record. The right approach is to reference the existence and location of the asset in your plan, then store the actual access credentials securely and separately (a reputable password manager with a legacy feature, a sealed instruction letter, or a hardware solution your trusted person can reach).
Photos, memories, and accounts with sentimental rather than dollar value
For young families, the most precious “asset” is often a decade of photos and videos in one cloud account. Those have no resale value and everything to do with grief. Name a Legacy Contact for Apple and an Inactive Account Manager for Google now — it takes ten minutes and is the single highest-value thing in this article.
Accounts that affect minor children
If you have young kids, a 529 plan, a custodial UTMA account, or a life-insurance portal may all live behind logins. Make sure the guardian and trustee you’ve named can actually reach the money meant for the children. Coordinating digital access with the broader provisions you’ve made for minors — including any trust you’ve set up for them — keeps the plan from breaking at exactly the moment it’s needed. Families with a child who has special needs face an even higher bar; benefits and account access have to be structured carefully, often through a built to preserve eligibility, and the digital piece should be coordinated with it.
A Practical Florida Digital-Asset Checklist
You don’t need to be a tech expert to get this in order. Work through the list:
- Inventory. List your accounts by category — financial, communication, social, crypto, subscriptions. You don’t have to record passwords in the list itself; record where they’re stored.
- Use the online tools. Set Apple Legacy Contact, Google Inactive Account Manager, and Facebook Legacy Contact today. These override everything else.
- Update your documents. Add digital-asset and content-disclosure authority to your will, trust, and durable power of attorney.
- Secure the keys. Use a password manager with an emergency or legacy-access feature so credentials pass safely without ending up in a public court file.
- Write a letter of instruction. A non-binding memo telling your representative what exists and where to look saves weeks of guesswork. Keep it with your other estate papers.
- Revisit yearly. Accounts and providers change. A plan written three phones ago may already be stale.
If you’d like a structured starting point, our overview of Florida wills and the basics of how Florida probate works explain how the documents fit together. For families weighing whether to keep assets out of the probate process entirely, a well-drafted can hold and pass certain digital assets more privately than a will does.
How This Fits the Rest of Your Plan
Digital assets aren’t a separate project bolted onto your estate plan — they’re a layer that runs through all of it. The same personal representative, agent, and trustee you name for your house and bank accounts will be the ones knocking on Apple’s and Coinbase’s doors. The cleanest plans treat the physical and digital worlds as one. That’s the heart of what a thorough review should cover for a first-time planner.
The good news: Florida has one of the more developed frameworks in the country for this, and the tools to get it right are mostly free and fast. The hard part is simply doing it before it’s needed. If you’re ready to put your digital life on paper alongside everything else, reach out to schedule a consultation and bring your account inventory with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my Florida will automatically give my family access to my online accounts?
No. Most accounts are licensed to you under terms of service that limit transfer, and privacy laws make providers cautious. Your will should include explicit digital-asset and communication-content authority under Florida’s Chapter 740, and any online tool you set (like Apple Legacy Contact) actually overrides your will, so the two must agree.
What is the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act?
It’s Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes. It sets a priority order for who can access your digital assets after death or incapacity: a custodian’s online tool first, your estate documents second, and the provider’s terms of service last. It also distinguishes the content of your communications from the basic record of them, with stronger protection for content.
How should I handle cryptocurrency in my estate plan?
Never write your seed phrase or private keys into your will, because a probated will becomes public. Instead, reference that the crypto exists and where access credentials are kept, then store the actual keys securely and separately using a password manager with legacy access or a sealed instruction. Without the keys, the assets are permanently lost.
What's the single most important step for a young family?
Set a Legacy Contact on Apple and an Inactive Account Manager on Google so your photos and primary email pass to someone you trust. It takes minutes, costs nothing, and overrides default provider policies that might otherwise lock your family out of irreplaceable memories.
Do I need to list every password in my estate documents?
No, and you shouldn’t put passwords directly in a will. Maintain a separate, secure inventory that records where credentials are stored rather than the credentials themselves, ideally in a password manager with an emergency-access feature, and keep a letter of instruction with your estate papers pointing your representative to it.
