By John F. Davenport, Esq. | Davenport & Associates, Norwalk, CT | May 4, 2026
When most people think about estate planning, they think about their house, their investments, and their bank accounts. They think about who gets what and how to minimize taxes. But there is an entire category of assets that most estate plans completely ignore: your digital life.
Your email account. Your online banking logins. Your Social Security online portal. Your investment accounts at Fidelity or Schwab. Your photos stored in iCloud or Google Photos. Your social media profiles. Your cryptocurrency wallet. Your Amazon account with years of purchase history. Your subscription services. Your frequent flyer miles. Your PayPal balance. The list goes on.
When you die, your family does not automatically get access to any of these. In many cases, they are legally prohibited from accessing them, even if they know your passwords, because using a deceased person’s login credentials can violate federal computer access laws. Without proper digital estate planning, your family could spend months fighting with tech companies just to close an email account or access photos of your grandchildren.
A new study from Carnegie Mellon University, presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in April 2026, found that almost none of the older adults surveyed had heard of the platform-specific tools designed to handle accounts after death, such as Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Apple’s Legacy Contact feature. Most relied on handwritten lists of passwords stored in a desk drawer. That is not a plan.
As a licensed attorney in New York and Connecticut, I help families build estate plans that account for both traditional and digital assets. This post explains what happens to your digital accounts when you die, the law that governs access, and the steps you should take now to protect your digital legacy.
Digital assets fall into several categories, and each presents unique challenges in terms of access, value, and transferability.
These include online banking accounts, investment platforms (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard), cryptocurrency wallets and exchange accounts, PayPal and Venmo balances, and digital payment platforms. These assets have clear monetary value but are often protected by layers of two-factor authentication, security questions, and terms of service agreements that restrict access to the original account holder.
These include email accounts (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo), cloud storage (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox), photo libraries, social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn), and messaging apps. These assets may not have monetary value, but they often hold enormous sentimental value. A lifetime of family photos stored in iCloud can be permanently lost if nobody can access the account.
These include streaming services, Amazon Prime, airline miles, hotel points, credit card rewards, and recurring subscriptions. Some of these have real monetary value (airline miles can be worth thousands of dollars). Others simply need to be cancelled to stop charges against the estate.
Domain names, websites, online businesses, e-commerce stores, digital content libraries, and intellectual property stored electronically all fall into this category. For business owners, these assets can represent a significant portion of the estate’s value.
| The Scale of the Problem The average American has over 100 online accounts. Many have financial value. Most require unique credentials to access. And the vast majority of estate plans say nothing about them. Without a digital estate plan, your executor may not even know these accounts exist, let alone how to access them. |
The legal framework for digital estate planning is governed primarily by the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA). As of 2026, 48 states including New York and Connecticut have adopted some version of RUFADAA.
RUFADAA establishes a three-tier hierarchy for determining who can access your digital accounts after your death:
If a platform offers a tool for you to designate what happens to your account after death (such as Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact), and you use that tool, your choices take priority over everything else, including your will, your trust, and the platform’s own terms of service. This is the most powerful option, but very few people know about it or use it.
If no online tool designation exists, your will, trust, or power of attorney can direct how your digital accounts should be handled. But the language must be explicit. A general grant of authority to your executor or trustee is usually not enough. Your documents should specifically reference digital assets and grant your fiduciary the authority to access, manage, and close digital accounts.
If you have not used an online tool and your estate documents do not address digital assets, the platform’s terms of service control. Many terms of service agreements prohibit access by anyone other than the original account holder, even family members, even after death. Under these terms, the platform may simply lock or delete the account.
| Not Sure If Your Estate Plan Covers Your Digital Life? John F. Davenport, Esq. and Davenport & Associates help CT and NY families locally, as well as clients all across the country, build comprehensive estate plans that include digital asset provisions, proper fiduciary authority, and coordination with their broader financial strategy. Click below to schedule your free 30-minute consultation. -> Schedule a Free Estate Plan Review -> jdavenportassociates.com/contact-us |
When a family has no digital estate plan, I see the same problems over and over in my practice.
The executor cannot access the deceased’s email. This means they cannot find bills that need to be paid, identify subscriptions that need to be cancelled, locate financial accounts, or communicate with institutions that require email verification.
The family loses irreplaceable photos and memories. If the deceased’s photos are stored in iCloud or Google Photos and nobody can access the account, those photos may be permanently lost. Apple and Google have processes for requesting access, but they are slow, require a court order or death certificate, and are not guaranteed to succeed.
Cryptocurrency is lost forever. Unlike a bank account, cryptocurrency stored in a personal wallet cannot be recovered by anyone without the private key. If the owner dies without leaving the key or seed phrase, the cryptocurrency is gone. There is no customer service to call. There is no court order that can recover it.
Subscriptions continue charging. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, meal delivery services, software subscriptions, and dozens of other recurring charges continue billing the deceased’s credit card or bank account until someone cancels them. Without login credentials, cancelling can require lengthy verification processes with each provider.
Identity theft becomes a risk. An unmonitored email account and social media profiles can become targets for identity thieves. Fraudulent activity on a deceased person’s accounts is surprisingly common and can create legal headaches for the estate.
List every online account you have, organized by category: financial, email, social media, cloud storage, subscriptions, loyalty programs, and business accounts. For each account, record the platform name, your username or email associated with it, and what type of content or value it holds. Do not put passwords in your will, because wills become public documents after death.
Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you designate up to 10 people to receive data from your account or to have the account deleted after a period of inactivity. Apple’s Legacy Contact allows a designated person to request access to your Apple account data after your death using an access key. Facebook’s Legacy Contact lets you choose someone to manage your profile after you die, or to have it deleted. Set these up now. It takes a few minutes per platform, and under RUFADAA, these designations take priority over everything else.
Use a password manager (such as 1Password, LastPass, or Bitwarden) and share vault access with your designated fiduciary. Alternatively, store credentials in a sealed document kept with your estate planning attorney or in a safe deposit box. Never include passwords in your will. Never leave them in an unsecured document on your computer.
Your will, trust, and power of attorney should explicitly reference digital assets and grant your fiduciary the authority to access, manage, transfer, and close digital accounts. In New York and Connecticut, the language should reference RUFADAA and authorize access to both the catalog of electronic communications and, if you wish, the content of those communications. Without explicit consent for content access, your fiduciary may only receive a list of accounts, not the actual emails, messages, or files.
Your digital executor can be the same person as your traditional executor, but it does not have to be. Consider choosing someone who is comfortable with technology and can navigate online platforms, security protocols, and customer service processes. Make sure they know where to find your credential vault and understand the scope of their authority.
Your digital life changes constantly. New accounts are created, old ones are abandoned, passwords change, and platforms update their policies. Review your digital asset inventory at least once a year, the same way you would review your beneficiary designations or your trust.
These are the questions I hear most from families addressing their digital assets.
| Q: Can my family just use my passwords after I die? Technically, accessing someone’s account with their credentials after death can violate federal computer access laws (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). RUFADAA provides a legal framework for fiduciaries to request access through proper channels. Setting up legacy tools and granting explicit authority in your estate documents protects your family from legal risk. |
| Q: Do I need to list all my passwords in my will? No, and you should not. Wills become public documents through probate. Anyone could see your credentials. Instead, use a password manager and share vault access with your fiduciary, or keep a sealed document with your attorney. |
| Q: What happens to cryptocurrency if I die without sharing my private keys? It is likely lost forever. Unlike bank accounts, cryptocurrency in a personal wallet cannot be recovered without the private key or seed phrase. No court order, no customer service, and no legal action can retrieve it. If you hold cryptocurrency, your private keys or seed phrase must be stored securely and accessible to your fiduciary. |
| Q: Does my power of attorney cover digital accounts? Only if it explicitly says so. A general power of attorney may not give your agent authority over digital accounts. Under RUFADAA, the power of attorney should specifically reference digital assets and, if you want your agent to access the content of communications (not just a list of accounts), it must explicitly grant that authority. |
| Q: What is Google’s Inactive Account Manager? It is a free tool that lets you choose what happens to your Google account (Gmail, Google Photos, Google Drive, YouTube) after a period of inactivity. You can designate up to 10 people to receive your data and choose whether the account should be deleted. Under RUFADAA, this designation takes legal priority over your will, trust, and Google’s own terms of service. |
| Q: Does RUFADAA apply in New York and Connecticut? Yes. Both states have adopted versions of RUFADAA. The law provides a framework for fiduciaries to access digital assets with proper authorization. However, the protections only work if your estate documents include explicit digital asset provisions and, ideally, you have also set up platform-specific legacy tools. |
Your digital life is a significant part of your estate, whether you think of it that way or not. Your email holds the keys to your financial accounts. Your cloud storage holds irreplaceable memories. Your cryptocurrency may hold real monetary value. And without a plan, your family could be locked out of all of it.
The good news is that building a digital estate plan is straightforward. It starts with an inventory, moves through setting up legacy tools on major platforms, includes secure credential storage, and finishes with updating your estate documents to explicitly grant your fiduciary the authority they need.
If your current estate plan does not mention digital assets, it is incomplete. And if you have cryptocurrency, online financial accounts, or a business with significant digital operations, addressing this gap is not optional. It is essential.
| Questions About Your Digital Assets or Estate Plan? John F. Davenport, Esq. and the team at Davenport & Associates help CT and NY families locally, as well as clients all across the country, create and update estate plans that protect both traditional and digital assets. Click below to schedule your free 30-minute consultation. -> Schedule Your Free Consultation -> jdavenportassociates.com/contact-us |
| References & Sources Carnegie Mellon University CyLab: Digital Estate Planning Study, CHI 2026 (cylab.cmu.edu) American Bar Association: The Digital Executor, Managing Online Assets in Modern Estate Planning (americanbar.org) Kitces.com: Why Managing Digital Assets Is Critical in Estate Planning (kitces.com) Purdue Global Law School: Digital Estate Planning Guide (purduegloballawschool.edu) Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), Uniform Law Commission (uniformlaws.org) U.S. Bank: How to Prepare a Digital Estate Plan (usbank.com) |
| About the Author | John F. Davenport, Esq. John F. Davenport holds a law degree from Pace University and an MBA in finance from Fordham University, and his business degree from the University of Notre Dame. He is a licensed attorney in New York and Connecticut, and financial advisor. He founded Davenport & Associates in 1997 and has spent more than 30 years helping CT and NY families build retirement income plans and estate strategies that work together — not against each other. As both a licensed attorney and financial advisor, John reviews estate plans from both the legal and financial perspective in a single conversation — a combination most families would otherwise need two separate professionals to replicate. Davenport & Associates | 800 Connecticut Avenue, Suite E401, Norwalk, CT 06854 Phone: (203) 853-6300 | jdavenportassociates.com IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Educational only—not investment/tax/legal advice. No strategy guarantees results—vary by rates, markets, laws, personal circumstances. Consult advisors. |