Digital assets in a Florida estate plan are the online accounts, files, and electronic records a person owns or controls — email, banking and brokerage logins, photos, cryptocurrency, social media, loyalty points, and cloud storage — together with the legal authority you grant a trusted person to access and manage them. In Florida, that authority is governed primarily by Chapter 740, the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which took effect July 1, 2016. Without the right language in your documents and the right settings on your accounts, your family can be locked out of property that legally belongs to you, even when they are named in your will or trust.
If you are an adult child helping an aging parent get organized — or planning your own estate while caring for a parent — this is one of the most overlooked corners of the whole process. Real estate and bank accounts get the attention. The email account that holds two-factor authentication codes for every other login? Usually nobody thinks about it until they’re staring at a password prompt with no way through.
What counts as a digital asset
The category is broader than most people assume. Under Florida law a digital asset is essentially any electronic record in which a person has a right or interest. In plain terms, that includes:
- Financial logins — online banking, brokerage and retirement portals, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and bill-pay accounts.
- Cryptocurrency and digital wallets — Bitcoin, Ethereum, exchange accounts, and the private keys or seed phrases that control them.
- Email accounts — often the master key, because password resets for everything else flow through them.
- Cloud storage and photos — Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, decades of family pictures.
- Social media and communications — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the personal correspondence inside them.
- Subscriptions and stored value — Amazon, streaming services, airline miles, and reward points that may have real cash value.
- Domains, websites, and small online businesses a parent may have built.
One important distinction Florida draws: the account is a digital asset, but the underlying money usually is not. The funds in an online bank account pass under your will, trust, or beneficiary designation like any other asset. What Chapter 740 governs is access — whether your fiduciary can log in, read the records, and manage the account at all.
How Chapter 740 actually decides who gets access
This is where Florida’s law surprises families. Most people assume a will or a power of attorney settles the question. It helps, but it is not the top of the hierarchy. The Act sets a three-tier order of priority, and you want to understand it before a crisis forces the issue.
Tier one: the provider’s online tool
If a platform offers its own tool to name who can access an account after death or incapacity, that setting wins — it overrides your will and your power of attorney. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Legacy Contact are the best-known examples. Apple now offers Legacy Contacts for an Apple ID. If your parent fills one of these out, it controls, full stop.
Tier two: your estate planning documents
If there is no online tool, or it wasn’t used, then the directions in your will, trust, power of attorney, or other signed record govern. This is the tier most of my clients can actually control through good drafting, and it’s why generic, decades-old documents so often fail here — they simply never mention digital property.
Tier three: the terms-of-service agreement
If neither of the first two speaks to the issue, the platform’s terms-of-service contract controls by default. Those agreements are written to protect the company, not your family, and many of them flatly prohibit transferring an account or sharing a password. Letting tier three decide for you is how heirs end up permanently locked out.
The takeaway is simple: you don’t want the fine print of a Silicon Valley user agreement deciding what your children can reach. You want tiers one and two doing the work.
Why this matters most when an adult child steps in for a parent
Chapter 740 doesn’t only apply at death. It also empowers an agent under a durable power of attorney and a court-appointed guardian to access digital assets while a person is still living but incapacitated. For families managing a parent through dementia, stroke recovery, or a long decline, this is the provision that matters day to day.
Here’s the catch that catches people: Florida law generally requires that a power of attorney specifically grant authority over digital assets — and, critically, the content of electronic communications like emails — for the agent to get full access. A boilerplate POA that doesn’t name digital assets may let your agent see a catalog of what exists but not read the messages inside. When your father’s pension portal emails a one-time security code to an inbox you can’t open, that distinction stops being academic.
If you’re caring for an aging parent, a properly drafted durable power of attorney is the single most useful tool here, because it works now, not just after death. The same elder-law planning that protects against long-term care costs should also hand the trusted child clear, written digital authority. Our firm and our affiliated elder law attorneys routinely build this language into incapacity planning so a family isn’t scrambling during a medical crisis.
Building digital assets into your Florida plan: a practical checklist
A workable digital estate plan isn’t complicated, but it does take a few deliberate steps. Here is the order I walk Florida clients through:
- Make an inventory. List the accounts that matter — financial, email, crypto, photos, business. You do not list passwords here; you list what exists and where. Update it once a year.
- Set the provider tools. Activate Google Inactive Account Manager, Apple Legacy Contact, and Facebook Legacy Contact. These are tier-one controls and they’re free.
- Update your documents. Add explicit digital-asset authority — including access to the content of electronic communications — to your will, your trust, and your durable power of attorney.
- Store credentials securely and separately. Use a reputable password manager, and tell your fiduciary how to reach it. Never write passwords into the will itself; a will becomes a public record in Florida probate.
- Plan for cryptocurrency deliberately. If a private key or seed phrase is lost, the asset is gone forever — no court order recovers it. These need a secure, documented succession plan of their own.
- Name the right person. Choose a fiduciary who is both trustworthy and reasonably comfortable with technology.
Where trusts fit in
For families with cryptocurrency, an online business, valuable domains, or simply a desire to keep matters private, a revocable living trust often handles digital property more gracefully than a will. A trust avoids probate, keeps your inventory out of the public record, and lets a successor trustee step in immediately without waiting on a court. Pairing a trust with the specific digital-asset language Chapter 740 requires is, in my experience, the cleanest approach. You can read more about how trust-based planning works and whether it fits your situation.
Whatever instrument you choose, the documents have to be drafted to current Florida standards. If your will or trust predates 2016, it almost certainly says nothing about digital assets — and that silence pushes your family down into tier three, at the mercy of terms-of-service contracts.
Common mistakes Florida families make
A few patterns come up again and again:
- Sharing a password and calling it a plan. Logging into a deceased parent’s account with their credentials can violate the platform’s terms and, in some cases, computer-access laws. Legal authority under Chapter 740 is the safe route.
- Putting passwords in the will. Wills are public once probated. Anything sensitive in them is exposed.
- Assuming a beneficiary form covers everything. It covers the money in a financial account, not access to email, photos, or social media.
- Forgetting to update after a divorce, move to Florida, or new accounts. A plan written in another state may not align with Florida’s framework.
Florida residents with ties to other states — and many of our clients split time between Florida and the Northeast — should make sure their planning works in both. Our Florida estate planning team coordinates with our New York office so a snowbird’s documents hold up wherever they’re needed.
The bottom line
Your digital life is real property with real value, and Florida’s Chapter 740 gives you genuine tools to protect it — if you use them. The combination that works is straightforward: inventory your accounts, set the provider tools, and put explicit digital-asset language into a durable power of attorney, a will, and ideally a trust. Do that, and the adult child you trust can step in smoothly, whether the moment comes during a long illness or after a parent is gone. Skip it, and you’ve handed those decisions to a user agreement nobody in your family ever read. If you’d like help putting this in place, reach out to our office to talk through your situation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my Florida will give my family access to my online accounts?
Not automatically, and not always. Under Florida’s Chapter 740, a provider’s own online tool — like Google Inactive Account Manager or Facebook Legacy Contact — overrides your will. Your will or trust only controls if no such tool was used, and even then it must include specific digital-asset language. A will that predates 2016 usually says nothing about digital property, which can leave your family locked out.
Can my adult child manage my online accounts if I become incapacitated?
Yes, but only with the right document. Chapter 740 lets an agent under a durable power of attorney access digital assets while you are still living, and a court-appointed guardian as well. For the agent to read the content of emails and messages, the power of attorney must specifically grant authority over digital assets and electronic communications. A boilerplate POA often is not enough.
Should I list my passwords in my will?
No. A Florida will becomes a public record once it is admitted to probate, so any passwords or sensitive account details in it would be exposed. Instead, store credentials in a reputable password manager and give your documents the legal authority to access it, while telling your fiduciary how to reach that manager.
What happens to cryptocurrency if I don't plan for it?
Cryptocurrency is uniquely unforgiving. If the private key or seed phrase that controls a wallet is lost, the asset is gone permanently — no court order or fiduciary authority can recover it. Crypto needs its own documented succession plan, often handled through a trust, so a trusted person can locate and control the keys.
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 — personal representatives, trustees, agents under a power of attorney, and guardians — legal authority to access and manage a person’s digital assets, and sets a three-tier order of priority: provider online tools first, then your estate planning documents, then the platform’s terms of service.
For more on our Florida practice, see our overview of powers of attorney in Florida. Morgan Legal Group's affiliated New York office also handles New York elder law.