Digital Assets and Online Accounts in Your Florida Estate Plan

Digital assets in your Florida estate plan are the electronic records, accounts, and online property you own or control — email, cloud storage, social media, cryptocurrency, domain names, payment platforms, customer databases, and the login credentials that unlock them. Under the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Fla. Stat. Ch. 740), your personal representative or trustee can only reach most of these accounts if your estate planning documents and the provider’s own settings give them clear authority. Without that authority spelled out, a grieving family or a business partner can be locked out indefinitely — even when the underlying value is six figures.

For Palm Beach business owners, this is no longer a niche concern. Your QuickBooks Online file, your Stripe and PayPal balances, your business email, your client list in a SaaS CRM, your domain registrar, and any crypto you hold are all digital assets. If you have spent years planning the succession of your company, but you have never told anyone how a fiduciary can lawfully access these accounts, you have left a gap that probate cannot easily close.

What counts as a digital asset under Florida law

Florida adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in 2016, codifying it as Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes. The Act draws a deliberate line that surprises most people: it separates the asset from the content of communications.

In plain terms, a fiduciary can more readily reach a catalog of your digital activity — the fact that an email exists, who it was to, and when it was sent — than the actual content of that email. Content of electronic communications is protected by federal privacy law (the Stored Communications Act), and Florida’s statute respects that boundary. Your personal representative generally needs your express consent, given through your will, trust, or a power of attorney, before a provider will disclose the substance of your private messages.

Digital assets a Florida estate plan should account for typically include:

• Financial and payment accounts: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Venmo, online banking, brokerage and robo-advisor logins.
• Cryptocurrency and tokens: exchange accounts (Coinbase, Kraken) and self-custodied wallets secured by private keys or seed phrases.
• Business infrastructure: domain registrars, web hosting, business email, accounting software, CRMs, and e-commerce storefronts (Shopify, Amazon Seller).
• Intellectual and creative property: a monetized YouTube channel, a digital course library, stock-photo portfolios, or licensed software.
• Loyalty and stored value: airline miles, hotel points, and gift-card balances, where the program’s terms allow transfer.
• Personal but sentimental data: photo libraries, cloud storage, and social media profiles.

Notice that some of these have transferable value and some do not. Airline miles often die with the account holder under program rules; a domain name registered to your business may be worth more than the desk it was built on. Sorting transferable value from access-only assets is the first practical step.

Why business owners face higher stakes

A salaried employee who loses access to a personal photo album suffers a private loss. A Palm Beach business owner who dies without leaving lawful access to the company’s payment processor, payroll software, and domain registrar can trigger a cascade: vendors go unpaid, the website lapses, customer trust erodes, and the value you spent a career building begins to leak before anyone has authority to stop it. Digital access is not a footnote to your succession plan. It is part of the operating system that keeps the business alive during the handoff.

The three-tier hierarchy of access under Chapter 740

Florida law resolves competing instructions in a specific order. Understanding this hierarchy tells you exactly where to invest your planning effort.

1. Online tools come first. If a provider offers an “online tool” — a setting that lets you name who can access an account after death — and you use it, that choice controls and overrides your will. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Apple’s Legacy Contact are the two best-known examples.
2. Your estate planning documents come second. If you have not used an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, or power of attorney govern. This is where a properly drafted plan earns its keep.
3. The provider’s terms-of-service come last. If you address access neither through an online tool nor through your documents, the platform’s default terms of service decide — and those terms frequently prohibit transfer and require a court order for anything more.

The lesson is direct: silence does not default to your family. Silence defaults to a corporate user agreement most people clicked through without reading. To keep control, you must affirmatively act at one of the first two tiers.

Drafting language that actually grants access

Generic estate documents drafted before 2016 almost never include the consent language Florida’s statute now expects. A modern plan should give fiduciaries explicit authority in each instrument where they might need it:

• In your will, authorize your personal representative to access, manage, distribute, and terminate your digital assets, including the content of electronic communications, to the fullest extent Chapter 740 permits.
• In your revocable trust, grant the trustee parallel authority, since assets you transfer into a trust are administered by the trustee, not the personal representative.
• In your durable power of attorney, include digital-asset powers so an agent can act while you are alive but incapacitated — a real risk for any business owner.

The interplay between a will and a trust matters enormously for owners. Many Palm Beach business owners hold their company interests in a revocable living trust to avoid probate and keep the transition private. If that is your structure, your trustee — not your personal representative — needs the digital-access powers, because the trustee administers the trust assets. A common drafting error is granting robust digital authority in the will while leaving the trust silent. To understand how trust-based planning fits the broader picture, this overview of is a useful starting point, and it pairs well with the Florida-specific guidance below.

Incapacity, not just death

Estate planning is often framed around death, but for a working owner, incapacity is the more frequent emergency. A stroke, a serious accident, or a cognitive decline can leave you unable to log in while the business still needs to run today. A durable power of attorney with express digital-asset authority lets your chosen agent step in immediately, without a court proceeding. This is the same planning instinct that drives sound — the goal is to keep a trusted person in control before a crisis, not to scramble after one.

Cryptocurrency: the asset that vanishes without a plan

Cryptocurrency deserves its own section because it breaks the assumptions behind every other asset. There is no bank to call, no provider to subpoena, and no help line that can recover a lost key. If your heirs cannot locate your private keys or seed phrase, the coins are simply gone — mathematically unrecoverable, regardless of how clear your will is.

At the same time, you cannot solve this by writing your seed phrase into your will. A Florida will admitted to probate becomes a public court record, so anyone could read it and drain the wallet. The planning challenge is to convey how to find and unlock the asset without exposing the secret itself. Practical approaches include:

• Storing keys and recovery phrases in a secure vault, hardware device, or password manager, with succession access configured.
• Leaving a separate, confidential memorandum — referenced by, but not contained in, the will — that tells the fiduciary where credentials live and how to use them.
• Recording the existence and approximate value of holdings so a fiduciary even knows to look. An asset no one knows about is an asset no one inherits.

For exchange-held crypto, your fiduciary works through the platform under Chapter 740 and the exchange’s death-of-account-holder process. For self-custodied crypto, your plan is the only access mechanism. Treat it accordingly.

Building your digital estate inventory

No drafting language helps a fiduciary who does not know an account exists. The most valuable hour you will spend is building and maintaining an inventory. A workable inventory captures, for each account:

1. The provider and the type of asset (financial, business operations, social, crypto, intellectual property).
2. Whether the account holds transferable value, holds only data, or controls business operations.
3. Where access credentials are stored — never the passwords themselves in a document that will become public.
4. Your wishes: transfer it, memorialize it, archive the data, or delete it.

Keep this inventory out of the will itself and store it where your fiduciary can reach it, such as an encrypted password manager with an emergency-access or legacy feature. Review it at least annually — digital footprints change far faster than wills do. For coordinating these records with your operating company, the team at the firm’s can help align the inventory with your business succession documents.

Common mistakes Palm Beach owners make

• Assuming the will covers everything. If a provider’s online tool conflicts with your will, the online tool wins. Audit your Google, Apple, and Facebook legacy settings directly.
• Putting passwords in the will. Probated wills are public records. Credentials belong in a secure vault referenced by the plan, not in the plan.
• Forgetting the trust. If your business interest sits in a revocable trust, the trustee needs digital authority — and an old will alone will not supply it.
• Ignoring incapacity. A durable power of attorney with digital powers prevents a months-long gap if you are alive but unable to act.
• Letting the inventory go stale. An account opened last quarter is invisible to a plan finalized two years ago.

How this fits your broader Florida estate plan

Digital assets do not replace traditional estate planning; they sit on top of it. The foundation is still a valid Florida will, a revocable trust where appropriate, a durable power of attorney, and health care directives. Digital-asset authority is a layer woven through each of those instruments. If you are starting from scratch or reviewing older documents, it is worth confirming that your will and core documents reflect current Florida law and that you understand how Florida probate would treat the assets you have not placed in trust.

For business owners especially, the digital layer and the succession layer must be designed together. The person who inherits or buys your company needs operational access on day one — and that access is governed by the same Chapter 740 framework that governs your personal email. Get both right, and the transition feels orderly. Get either wrong, and the most modern part of your estate becomes the part that fails first.

If you have questions about protecting the digital side of your estate, our Palm Beach estate planning attorneys can review your documents and your online accounts together. Contact our office to start the conversation.

Frequently asked questions

What law governs digital assets in a Florida estate?

Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified at Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes, governs how personal representatives, trustees, and agents under a power of attorney may access a person’s digital assets. It works alongside federal privacy law, which restricts disclosure of the content of private electronic communications unless you have consented.

Can I just write all my passwords in my will?

No. A will admitted to Florida probate becomes a public court record, so listing passwords or a crypto seed phrase there exposes them to anyone. Instead, grant your fiduciary digital-access authority in the will, trust, and power of attorney, and store the actual credentials in a secure password manager or vault that your fiduciary can reach.

What happens to my online accounts if I have no plan at all?

Under Chapter 740, if you have used no online tool and your documents are silent, the provider’s terms of service control. Those terms often prohibit transferring an account and may require your representative to obtain a court order before the provider discloses anything, which means delay, cost, and sometimes permanent loss of access.

Who should have digital access if my business is in a trust?

The trustee. Assets held in a revocable living trust are administered by the trustee rather than the personal representative named in your will, so the trust document must grant the trustee authority over the business’s digital accounts. A common error is granting that authority in the will while leaving the trust silent.

How is cryptocurrency different from other digital assets?

Cryptocurrency held in a self-custodied wallet has no provider to contact and no recovery process. If your heirs cannot find your private keys or seed phrase, the funds are permanently lost. Your estate plan must securely convey how to locate and unlock the wallet without publishing the secret itself in any document that becomes public.