Digital Assets and Online Accounts in Your Florida Estate Plan

Digital assets in a Florida estate plan are the online accounts, files, and electronic records you own or control during life that someone else will need to manage after you die or become incapacitated. Under Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes), your personal representative, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney can be given lawful authority to access those assets, but only if your estate planning documents say so clearly. Without that planning, the people you trust can be locked out by federal privacy law and a provider’s terms-of-service agreement, even when they hold a court appointment.

I have sat across the table from too many Miami families who discovered, in the worst week of their lives, that they could not get into a parent’s email, could not pause a deceased spouse’s subscriptions draining the bank account, and could not even confirm what financial accounts existed because the paper statements had stopped years ago. Digital assets are no longer a footnote. For most Floridians, they are now a meaningful part of the estate, and surviving spouses in particular feel the gaps most sharply.

What Counts as a Digital Asset in Florida

The term is broader than people assume. It is not limited to cryptocurrency or some niche tech holding. A “digital asset” is generally any electronic record in which you have a right or interest. In practice, the categories I see in real estates include:

• Financial and payment accounts — online banking, brokerage logins, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle history, and cryptocurrency wallets held on exchanges like Coinbase or in cold storage.
• Communications — email accounts (often the master key to everything else), text and voicemail archives, and messaging apps.
• Loyalty and stored value — airline miles, hotel points, credit card rewards, and gift card balances.
• Income-producing accounts — a YouTube channel, an Etsy or eBay shop, an Amazon seller account, a monetized blog, or a business’s social media presence.
• Personal and sentimental files — photos and videos stored in iCloud, Google Photos, or Dropbox, which families fight over more than money.
• Subscriptions and recurring billing — streaming services, software licenses, domain registrations, and cloud storage that keep charging long after death.

One distinction matters more than any other. Florida law, following the uniform act, separates the content of electronic communications (the actual body of your emails and messages) from the catalogue (the metadata: who you emailed, when, the subject lines). The content is treated as the most private and is the hardest for a fiduciary to reach. A planning document that addresses one but not the other can leave your representative half-equipped.

How Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act Works

Florida adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified as Chapter 740, Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2016. The statute was the legislature’s answer to a real conflict: federal privacy laws and provider contracts were designed to keep strangers out of your accounts, but they were also keeping out the very people a probate court had just appointed to wind up your affairs.

Chapter 740 resolves that tension through a clear order of priority. It tells custodians (the companies holding your accounts) whose instructions to follow when disclosing digital assets to a fiduciary. The hierarchy works like this:

1. An online tool, if you used one. If a provider offers a built-in setting that lets you name who can access your account after death, your choice there controls, and it overrides what your will says. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Legacy Contact are the two best-known examples.
2. Your estate planning documents, if you did not use an online tool. A directive in your will, trust, or power of attorney that grants or limits access to digital assets is honored next. This is where good drafting earns its keep.
3. The provider’s terms-of-service agreement, if you did neither. When you are silent, the click-through contract you accepted years ago decides everything, and most of those contracts default to denial or deletion.

The statute also gives a properly authorized fiduciary protection under Florida’s computer crime laws (Chapter 815), so that accessing the account is treated as authorized rather than as unlawful intrusion. That protection only exists, however, when the authority is real and documented. A grieving spouse who guesses a password and logs in is not protected the same way an appointed fiduciary acting under a clear directive is.

Why a Court Appointment Alone Is Not Enough

This is the point clients find most counterintuitive. Being named personal representative in the will, or even receiving Letters of Administration from a Florida probate court, does not automatically open every account. For the content of private communications especially, many custodians will demand language showing that you consented to disclosure, or a court order specifically directing it. If your documents are silent, your representative may be forced to file a separate petition, which costs time and money and is not always granted. Planning ahead is dramatically cheaper than litigating access after the fact.

Special Concerns for Surviving Spouses and the Elective Share

Surviving spouses in Florida have rights that depend on knowing what the estate actually holds, and digital assets can hide value that affects those rights. The Florida elective share, under Chapter 732, gives a surviving spouse a claim to thirty percent of the elective estate. The elective estate is not just the probate assets; it reaches a broad pool that can include certain accounts, transfers, and property interests.

Here is the practical problem. If a portion of a spouse’s wealth lives in a cryptocurrency wallet, a monetized online business, or a brokerage account that only ever sent electronic statements, a surviving spouse may not even know it exists. You cannot claim your share of an asset you cannot find. I have seen elective-share calculations turn on whether anyone could locate a wallet’s recovery phrase. When that phrase is lost, the value is effectively destroyed, not just hidden.

For blended families and second marriages, the stakes climb higher. A surviving spouse and adult children from a prior marriage may both have legitimate claims, and a buried digital account becomes a flashpoint. Sound planning protects the surviving spouse’s ability to identify, value, and claim what the law already entitles them to. If you want a fuller picture of how spousal protections fit together, our overview of Florida wills and spousal rights walks through how these pieces interact, and you can also review how the elective share is handled during Florida probate administration.

Practical Steps to Protect Digital Assets in Your Plan

You do not need to be a technologist to do this well. You need a method and the right legal authority behind it.

• Inventory what you have. Build a running list of accounts, providers, and where each one lives. Do not write passwords into your will, which becomes a public record in probate. Keep credentials in a secure password manager and tell your fiduciary how to reach it.
• Use the online tools. Set up Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Legacy Contact now. Because Chapter 740 gives those settings top priority, they are the most reliable instructions you can leave.
• Add explicit digital-asset language to your documents. Your will, your revocable trust, and especially your durable power of attorney should authorize your fiduciary to access, manage, and close digital accounts, and should expressly consent to disclosure of the content of electronic communications.
• Plan for incapacity, not just death. A durable power of attorney that addresses digital assets lets an agent act while you are alive but unable, which is just as important as post-death access. This is core elder-law territory.
• Handle cryptocurrency deliberately. Whoever inherits a wallet needs the keys or recovery phrase. Store them securely and leave clear, non-public instructions on retrieval. Coins with lost keys are gone forever.
• Revisit it. You open new accounts every year. A digital inventory reviewed every couple of years stays useful; one written once and forgotten does not.

Coordinating Digital Assets With Trusts and Cross-State Planning

For higher-value or income-producing digital holdings, a revocable living trust is often the cleaner vehicle. Funding an asset into a trust keeps it out of public probate and lets your successor trustee step in with continuity, which matters when an online business or monetized channel would lose value during a gap in management. The same logic that applies to a brokerage account or a rental property applies to a profitable digital asset, and the team at Morgan Legal regularly structures to hold exactly these kinds of accounts so management never pauses.

Incapacity planning deserves the same care. When digital authority is woven into a durable power of attorney and coordinated with a trust, an agent or trustee can keep accounts current, stop fraudulent charges, and preserve value the moment you are unable to act. Our colleagues who focus on see firsthand how a well-drafted power of attorney prevents the lockout that otherwise follows a stroke or a dementia diagnosis.

Many Miami families also hold property or accounts in more than one state, and a New York connection is common. Coordinating Florida documents with New York counsel avoids conflicting instructions and duplicate probate. For clients whose planning sits squarely in Florida, the can build the digital-asset provisions directly into your will, trust, and power of attorney so everything points the same direction.

Bringing It Together

Digital assets reward the same discipline as the rest of estate planning: identify what you own, decide who should control it, and put legal authority behind that decision before a crisis arrives. In Florida, Chapter 740 hands you the tools, but the law only works if your documents and online settings actually use them. For surviving spouses, that planning is also the difference between knowing the full estate and being shut out of value the elective share was meant to protect. If your current plan is silent on email, cloud storage, crypto, or online accounts, it is incomplete. Reach out to our Miami estate planning office to make sure the people you trust will not be locked out when it matters most.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does my Florida will automatically give my executor access to my online accounts?

Not necessarily. Even with Letters of Administration from a Florida probate court, many providers will deny access to the content of private communications unless your documents expressly consent to disclosure under Chapter 740, or a court orders it. A will that is silent on digital assets can leave your personal representative locked out, so the access language needs to be drafted in on purpose.

What is the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act?

It is Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2016, which lets fiduciaries such as personal representatives, trustees, and agents under a power of attorney access a person’s digital assets. It sets a priority order: an online tool you used controls first, then a directive in your will, trust, or power of attorney, and finally the provider’s terms-of-service agreement if you left no instructions.

Can a surviving spouse's elective share include digital assets like cryptocurrency?

Yes. Florida’s elective share under Chapter 732 entitles a surviving spouse to thirty percent of the elective estate, and that pool can reach value held in cryptocurrency, online brokerage accounts, or a monetized digital business. The practical challenge is locating and valuing those assets, which is why a clear digital inventory protects a surviving spouse’s rights.

Where should I store my passwords if not in my will?

Never put passwords in your will, because a will filed in probate becomes a public record. Use a reputable password manager or a sealed, secure document, and make sure your fiduciary knows how to access it. Pair that with proper authority in your will, trust, and durable power of attorney so the access is legally valid, not just technically possible.

What happens to my digital assets if I become incapacitated rather than die?

A durable power of attorney that specifically addresses digital assets lets your agent manage your accounts while you are alive but unable to act. Without that language, an agent may be unable to stop fraudulent charges, pay bills, or preserve an online business, which is why incapacity planning for digital assets is just as important as post-death planning.