Digital assets in a Florida estate plan are the electronic records you own or have a right to access — email, photo libraries, social media profiles, cloud storage, cryptocurrency, online banking, loyalty points, and more. Florida law lets you give a trusted person (a “fiduciary”) legal authority to manage or close these accounts after you die or become incapacitated, but only if you grant that authority correctly while you are still able to. Without the right language in your documents and the right settings on your accounts, your family can be locked out of years of memories and money.
If you are putting together a first estate plan for your young family, this is one of the easiest pieces to overlook and one of the most painful to fix later. I have sat across from spouses who could not retrieve their late partner’s photos of their children, and from parents who had no idea a deceased adult child held five figures in a crypto wallet. A little planning now spares your loved ones that scramble.
What counts as a digital asset under Florida law
Florida defines digital assets broadly. Under the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2016), a digital asset is “an electronic record in which an individual has a right or interest.” That definition is intentionally wide. It captures things that have obvious dollar value and things that have only sentimental value.
For a typical South Florida family, the list usually includes:
- Financial accounts: online banking, brokerage and retirement portals, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App balances.
- Cryptocurrency and digital tokens: Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, and NFTs held in exchange accounts or self-custody wallets.
- Email accounts: often the master key, because password resets for everything else route through email.
- Social media and content: Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube, including monetized channels.
- Cloud storage and photos: iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and the family photo and video library.
- Subscriptions and loyalty programs: streaming services, airline miles, hotel points, and credit-card rewards.
- Business and creator assets: domain names, e-commerce stores, online courses, and advertising accounts.
One important distinction: the law separates the asset itself from the content of electronic communications. The actual messages inside an email or chat — the words you wrote and received — receive stronger privacy protection than a list of who you emailed or a catalog of your files. That distinction matters when you decide how much access to give.
Why a will alone usually is not enough
Many people assume that naming a personal representative in a Florida will automatically hands that person the keys to every online account. It does not work that way. Two separate barriers stand in the way: federal privacy law and the terms-of-service agreement you clicked through when you opened the account.
Federal statutes like the Stored Communications Act restrict service providers from disclosing the content of your communications without lawful consent. Meanwhile, the platform’s terms of service may prohibit anyone but you from logging in — and may even treat sharing your password as a violation. So a fiduciary who simply uses your saved passwords could technically be breaking a service agreement or, worse, a computer-fraud statute.
Chapter 740 solves this by giving you a lawful way to grant consent in advance. But you have to actually use it. Silence in your documents defaults to the platform’s terms, which usually means your family gets little or nothing.
How Florida’s three-tier hierarchy decides who gets access
Chapter 740 sets up a clear order of priority for what controls access to a given account. Think of it as three levels, from strongest to weakest:
- The online tool. If the provider offers an “online tool” that lets you name who can access the account — and lets you change that choice at any time — your direction there beats everything else. Facebook’s Legacy Contact and Google’s Inactive Account Manager are the classic examples.
- Your estate planning documents. If you did not use an online tool (or the provider does not offer one), then a clear instruction in your will, trust, power of attorney, or other record controls.
- The terms-of-service agreement. If you addressed access in neither place, the provider’s own contract governs — and that almost always favors locking the account.
This hierarchy is the single most practical thing to understand. A Facebook Legacy Contact you set five years ago will override a contrary instruction buried in your will. The two have to be coordinated, or they will fight each other.
Which fiduciaries can be granted access
Chapter 740 contemplates several roles, and the document that empowers each one is different. Coordinating them is the heart of good planning.
Personal representative (after death)
Your personal representative — what other states call an executor — administers your probate estate. To reach the content of your communications, the personal representative generally needs your express consent in your will or another record, plus a court order or the provider’s required documentation. For non-content assets, such as a catalog of accounts, the bar is lower.
Agent under a durable power of attorney (during incapacity)
Death is not the only risk. If a car accident or illness leaves you incapacitated, your agent under a durable power of attorney may need to pay bills from online accounts and manage your affairs. Under Florida’s power of attorney statute (Chapter 709), authority over digital assets and especially over the content of communications must be granted specifically — it is not assumed from a general grant of power.
Trustee (for assets held in trust)
If you use a revocable living trust — common for young families who want to avoid probate and plan for minor children — the trustee manages whatever you transfer into it. Chapter 740 addresses trustee access directly, including when the trustee was not the original account user. If you hold a monetized YouTube channel, a profitable e-commerce store, or a crypto portfolio in trust, naming the trustee’s digital authority clearly is essential. You can read more about how trusts work as a planning vehicle on Morgan Legal’s .
Guardian (for a ward)
A court-appointed guardian may also receive access to a ward’s digital assets, subject to court oversight. This matters when planning for an aging parent or a vulnerable adult.
Special considerations for young families
If you are reading this with a toddler asleep down the hall, a few items deserve extra attention.
Minor children and digital inheritance. You cannot simply leave a crypto wallet or a monetized account “to the kids.” Minors cannot hold or manage these assets directly. A trust — with a trustee who has clear digital authority and a clear roadmap — is the right container. If your child has special needs, the planning is more involved still, and the wrong structure can disrupt benefits eligibility. A properly drafted is built to hold assets without jeopardizing means-tested support, and the same principle applies to digital holdings.
The family photo library. For most young parents this is the asset they care about most and protect least. Decide now who should be able to download those photos, and use the provider’s online tool to designate that person.
Cryptocurrency is uniquely fragile. Self-custodied crypto lives or dies with the private key or seed phrase. No fiduciary, court, or platform can recover it if that key is lost. Authority in a document is meaningless without secure, retrievable access to the keys themselves — never written into the will, which becomes a public record in probate.
A practical checklist to build the digital side of your plan
- Inventory your accounts. List every account with value or meaning. You do not list passwords in the inventory itself.
- Use a password manager. Store credentials in one encrypted vault, and make sure a trusted person can reach the master credential through your plan.
- Set the online tools now. Configure Google Inactive Account Manager and Facebook Legacy Contact, and check whether your other key platforms offer similar tools.
- Update your documents. Add specific Chapter 740 digital-asset language to your will, trust, and durable power of attorney so each fiduciary has matching authority.
- Plan crypto separately. Document where keys are stored and how an authorized person can retrieve them — securely, never in the will.
- Review every few years. Accounts, platforms, and family circumstances change. So should the plan.
For a fuller picture of how these pieces fit a Florida estate, our wills overview and Florida probate guide walk through the documents and the court process that may follow. Florida residents can also review the firm’s .
The bottom line
Your digital life is part of your estate whether or not your plan acknowledges it. Florida gives you the tools to pass it on cleanly — Chapter 740, a well-drafted will and trust, a durable power of attorney with specific digital authority, and the providers’ own online tools. The trick is using all of them together so they point the same direction. Get it right while you are healthy and able, and you hand your family clarity instead of a locked door. If you are ready to add this to your plan, contact our office to talk it through.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act?
It is Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes, effective July 1, 2016. It gives fiduciaries such as personal representatives, agents under a power of attorney, trustees, and guardians a lawful path to access or manage your digital assets after death or incapacity, while balancing your privacy. It works through a three-tier hierarchy: a provider’s online tool controls first, then your estate planning documents, then the terms-of-service agreement.
Will my Florida will automatically give my executor access to my online accounts?
Not by itself. Federal privacy law and the platform’s terms of service can block access even with a valid will. To reach the content of communications, your personal representative usually needs your express consent in the will or another record plus the provider’s required documentation. The most reliable approach is to combine specific digital-asset language in your documents with the provider’s online tools.
What happens to my cryptocurrency if I die without a plan in Florida?
Self-custodied cryptocurrency is recoverable only with the private key or seed phrase. If no one can locate it, the assets are effectively lost forever, no matter what your documents say. Plan for it separately by documenting where keys are stored and how an authorized person can retrieve them securely. Never write keys into your will, which becomes a public record during probate.
How do online tools like Google Inactive Account Manager fit into my estate plan?
Under Chapter 740, a provider’s online tool sits at the top of the priority order if it lets you change your choice at any time. That means a Facebook Legacy Contact or Google Inactive Account Manager setting overrides a contrary instruction in your will. Coordinate the two so they do not conflict.
Can I give my power of attorney agent access to my digital accounts while I am alive?
Yes, but the authority must be granted specifically. Under Florida’s power of attorney statute (Chapter 709), broad general powers do not automatically include digital assets, and access to the content of electronic communications must be expressly stated. Ask your attorney to include explicit Chapter 740 language in your durable power of attorney.
For more on our Florida practice, see our overview of Florida estate planning. Morgan Legal Group's affiliated New York office also handles Article 81 guardianship in New York.