Digital assets in a Florida estate plan are the electronic records you own or control online — email, financial logins, cloud storage, cryptocurrency, domain names, and social media — that a personal representative, trustee, or agent may need to reach after you die or become incapacitated. In Florida, who gets access, and how, is governed primarily by Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes, the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Without the right authorizations in your will, trust, and power of attorney, your loved ones can be locked out of accounts the law would otherwise let them manage.
If you are a physician, a partner at a firm, or any professional with a complicated financial life, your “digital estate” is often larger and more consequential than your physical one. The brokerage app on your phone, the practice’s patient-portal credentials, the LLC’s registered domain, the crypto wallet you set up years ago — each of these can stall an estate for months if no one can lawfully get in. This article explains how Florida law treats these assets and what an estate plan drafted in Miami should actually contain.
What Counts as a Digital Asset Under Florida Law
Florida Statutes § 740.002 defines a digital asset as an electronic record in which an individual has a right or interest. That definition is deliberately broad. It is not limited to things with obvious dollar value. It captures both the underlying asset and the account that holds it, and it covers the catalogue of an electronic communication (the metadata — who you emailed and when) separately from the content of that communication.
For planning purposes, it helps to sort digital property into a few practical buckets:
- Financial accounts with real value: online brokerage and bank logins, PayPal and Venmo balances, cryptocurrency held in exchanges or self-custody wallets, and rewards programs with cash equivalents.
- Business and professional assets: domain names, websites, customer or patient databases, practice-management portals, professional licenses tied to online accounts, and intellectual property stored in the cloud.
- Records and documents: tax files in cloud storage, scanned deeds and titles, password managers, and the email accounts that double as the recovery key for everything else.
- Sentimental and reputational assets: photo libraries, social media profiles, blogs, and loyalty or subscription accounts.
One asset deserves special attention: your primary email account. It is rarely worth money, but it is the master key. Password resets, two-factor codes, and account-recovery links almost all flow through it. A fiduciary who controls the email frequently controls everything downstream — which is exactly why custodians and the law treat email content cautiously.
How Chapter 740 Decides Who Gets Access
The Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act took effect on July 1, 2016, and adopted the national RUFADAA framework with Florida-specific tweaks. The statute sets up a clear order of priority for deciding who may reach your accounts and what they may see.
The three-tier hierarchy
- The online tool controls first. If a platform offers its own designation feature — Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact, for example — and you used it, that choice overrides your will. The statute gives a properly completed online tool top priority.
- Your estate-planning documents control next. If you did not use an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, or durable power of attorney govern. This is where careful drafting matters, because the documents can grant or withhold access to the content of communications, not just the catalogue.
- The terms-of-service agreement controls last. If you left no instructions anywhere, the provider’s terms of service decide — and many of those agreements default to denying access entirely.
The practical lesson is that silence favors the platform, not your family. A Florida estate plan that never mentions digital assets effectively hands the decision to Apple, Google, and the rest, whose default postures range from cooperative to outright obstructive.
Fiduciary authority and the content distinction
Under § 740.05, a fiduciary acting under your tangible-property authority generally may access digital assets that are not held by a custodian or governed by a terms-of-service agreement. For custodian-held accounts, the statute draws a sharp line between the catalogue of electronic communications and the content. A personal representative may obtain a list of whom you emailed and when as a matter of course, but to read the actual content of those messages, the plan must contain specific, statute-compliant consent. Florida’s custodian-compliance rules in § 740.06 then tell the provider how to respond and shield it from liability when it does.
Why Professionals and Physicians Face Higher Stakes
For a North Miami physician or a professional with ownership interests, digital-asset planning is not a tidy add-on — it is often where the estate succeeds or seizes up.
Consider the layered exposure. A physician may control a practice email tied to patient communications, a credentialing portal, e-prescribing software, and a malpractice-policy login, alongside personal brokerage and retirement accounts. Several of those carry HIPAA and licensing obligations that survive death and cannot simply be handed to a grieving spouse. The personal representative needs lawful access to wind the practice down or transfer it, but cannot lawfully expose protected health information to the wrong party. That tension has to be resolved in the documents, not improvised at the worst possible moment.
Business owners face a parallel problem. If a single-member LLC owns the domain and the domain renews from a personal credit card no one can find, the website — sometimes the most valuable asset in the company — can lapse while the estate is still in probate. Cryptocurrency is the starkest case of all. If you hold keys in self-custody and the seed phrase dies with you, the asset is gone. No court order, no statute, and no attorney can recover it. For high-net-worth professionals, coordinating digital access with broader strategies — from business succession to — keeps the digital layer from quietly undoing the rest.
Building Digital Assets Into Each Estate-Planning Document
Effective digital-asset planning is not a single clause. It is a coordinated set of authorizations spread across your core documents.
Last will and testament
Your will should expressly authorize your personal representative to access, manage, and dispose of digital assets, and — where you want it — grant consent to the content of electronic communications under Chapter 740. Because probate is public and slow, the will should empower access without forcing your representative to litigate it. You can read more about how these documents fit together on our Florida wills page.
Revocable living trust
Assets you want managed privately and without probate delay can be held in or coordinated through a revocable trust, with the trustee given parallel digital-asset authority. For a busy professional, this keeps the website live and the brokerage accessible while the rest of the estate moves through Florida probate.
Durable power of attorney
Death is only half the risk; incapacity is the other half. A Florida durable power of attorney should specifically grant your agent authority over digital assets, because Florida’s POA statute (Chapter 709) requires certain powers to be enumerated rather than implied. A general grant of authority will not reliably get your agent into your accounts — the digital language must be explicit.
An inventory and access plan — kept outside the will
Finally, maintain a living inventory of accounts and where credentials live. Never list passwords in your will, which becomes a public record in probate. Instead, use a reputable password manager and tell your fiduciary how to reach it. The documents grant legal authority; the inventory makes that authority usable.
Common Mistakes Florida Families Make
- Assuming a will alone is enough. An online-tool designation can quietly override it, and incapacity needs a power of attorney the will never addresses.
- Putting passwords in the will. Probate filings are public; credentials belong in a secure manager, not the court file.
- Ignoring two-factor recovery. If the recovery phone or email is inaccessible, lawful authority still hits a technical wall.
- Forgetting crypto keys. No statute recovers a lost seed phrase. Custody planning has to be deliberate.
- Leaving business and personal assets tangled. Domains, portals, and licenses tied to personal accounts can lapse during probate.
Estate planning for digital assets rewards specificity. The families who struggle are almost never the ones who planned too much — they are the ones who assumed the law or the platform would sort it out. To see how a coordinated plan looks for Florida residents, review our firm’s services, and feel free to contact our Miami office to start an inventory of your own.
The principles here echo what experienced planners apply across jurisdictions. For complex, high-asset matters, our affiliated attorneys handle parallel questions of fiduciary access, incapacity planning, and protecting wealth that increasingly lives online rather than in a filing cabinet.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my Florida will automatically give my executor access to my online accounts?
Not necessarily. Under Chapter 740, an online-tool designation you set up with the provider (such as Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact) takes priority over your will. If you used no online tool, your will controls only if it contains specific digital-asset language and, for the content of communications, statute-compliant consent. A will that is silent on digital assets defaults to the provider’s terms of service, which often deny access.
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 — personal representatives, trustees, agents under a power of attorney, and guardians — access and manage a person’s digital assets. It sets a priority order (online tool, then estate documents, then terms of service) and distinguishes between the catalogue of communications and their content.
Should I list my passwords in my will?
No. A will becomes a public record once it is filed in probate, so passwords listed there are exposed to anyone. Instead, grant digital-asset authority in your will, trust, and durable power of attorney, and keep credentials in a secure password manager. Tell your fiduciary how to reach the manager separately from the will.
Why is digital-asset planning more important for physicians and business owners?
Professionals often control accounts that carry legal duties beyond ordinary property — patient portals subject to HIPAA, credentialing logins, business domains, and self-custody cryptocurrency. Without explicit, coordinated authority, a personal representative may be unable to wind down a practice, keep a website live, or recover crypto, while still risking improper disclosure of protected information.
Does a Florida power of attorney cover my digital accounts if I become incapacitated?
Only if it says so. Florida’s power of attorney statute (Chapter 709) requires many powers to be specifically enumerated rather than implied. A general durable power of attorney will not reliably grant your agent access to digital assets; the document must include express digital-asset language drafted to work alongside Chapter 740.
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