Your digital life is more valuable than you think. Email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage, cryptocurrency wallets, digital businesses, online banking, and subscription services all represent assets, access, and memories that can be permanently lost if your estate plan does not address them. Yet most estate plans created before 2020 contain no provisions for digital assets whatsoever.
Oversight 1: No Inventory of Digital Assets
The first and most fundamental problem is that families simply do not know what digital assets exist. When a loved one dies, the family may be unaware of cryptocurrency wallets that could contain tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, online bank or investment accounts not linked to physical mail, digital businesses generating income through e-commerce, advertising, or subscription services, cloud storage containing irreplaceable family photos, videos, and documents, domain names and websites with significant value, or loyalty programs with accumulated points worth thousands of dollars.
Without an inventory, these assets are effectively invisible. Cryptocurrency without the private key is permanently inaccessible. Online accounts that no one knows about eventually get deleted. Digital businesses stop generating revenue and lose their value. The solution is to maintain a secure, regularly updated inventory of all digital accounts, including the platform, username, and access method. This inventory should be referenced in your estate plan and stored securely with your trusted person.
Oversight 2: No Legal Authority to Access Accounts
Even when families know a digital account exists, they often cannot access it. The terms of service for most online platforms prohibit sharing login credentials, and many platforms will not grant access to heirs without a court order. California's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) provides a legal framework for fiduciary access to digital assets, but it requires that your estate plan specifically grant this authority.
Your trust or power of attorney should include explicit provisions authorizing your trustee or agent to access digital accounts, manage digital assets, and communicate with online service providers on your behalf. Without these provisions, your fiduciary may need to obtain a court order to access each individual account, a time-consuming and expensive process.
Additionally, some platforms (like Google and Facebook) offer their own legacy or memorialization tools that allow you to designate someone to manage your account after death. Setting up these platform-specific tools in addition to your legal documents provides an extra layer of access.
Oversight 3: Cryptocurrency Without an Access Plan
Cryptocurrency presents unique estate planning challenges because it is designed to be accessible only to the holder of the private key. If you hold cryptocurrency in a self-custody wallet (hardware wallet or software wallet) and your private keys or seed phrase are lost, the cryptocurrency is gone permanently. There is no bank to call, no password reset, and no court order that can recover it. Billions of dollars in cryptocurrency have been permanently lost because the holders died without sharing their access credentials.
The challenge is balancing security during your lifetime with accessibility after your death. Storing your private keys in a safe deposit box, with your estate planning attorney, or in a secure document referenced in your trust are all viable approaches. Some clients use a multi-signature wallet that requires two of three keys to access, with one key held by the owner, one by a trusted family member, and one by an attorney. The right approach depends on the amount of cryptocurrency involved and your personal security preferences.
Building a Digital Estate Plan
A comprehensive digital estate plan should include a complete inventory of digital assets and accounts, legal authority in your trust and power of attorney to access and manage digital assets, specific instructions for cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based assets, platform-specific legacy designations where available, and regular updates as new accounts are opened and old ones are closed. This is not a one-time project. Your digital footprint changes constantly, and your digital estate plan should be updated at least annually.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Every family's circumstances are unique. Contact MVP Law Group for a consultation to discuss your specific situation.