Digital Assets and Online Accounts in Your Florida Estate Plan: A Palm Beach Guide

Digital assets in a Florida estate plan are the electronic accounts, files, and online property you own or control, plus the legal authority you give a trusted person to access them after you die or become incapacitated. Under Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes), your executor, trustee, agent, or guardian cannot simply log in to your accounts on their own. They generally need authority that you granted in advance, and that authority belongs in your will, trust, or durable power of attorney.

Most of my Palm Beach clients spent decades building paper files they could touch: deeds, stock certificates, savings bonds in a drawer. Their grandchildren are building a different kind of estate, and so, increasingly, are they. The brokerage statement now lives in an inbox. The vacation photos live in the cloud. The rewards points, the domain name, the small crypto position a son set up “just to try it” all sit behind passwords that no one else knows. When a snowbird passes away in West Palm Beach and the family is back in Toronto or Cleveland, those locked accounts can become a quiet, expensive headache.

What Counts as a Digital Asset in Florida

Florida law defines a digital asset broadly. Section 740.002 covers an electronic record in which you have a right or interest. The catalogue of the communication itself, the content, and the underlying account all fall within the statute. In plain terms, if it has a login, a license, or stored value, it probably belongs in your inventory.

For a typical retiree or seasonal resident in Palm Beach County, the list usually includes:

• Financial accounts you access online — brokerage, banking, and retirement portals, plus anything held with an app-only institution that never mails paper.
• Email and communications — Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail. These matter more than people expect, because password resets for everything else flow through the inbox.
• Cloud storage and photos — Google Photos, iCloud, Dropbox. Often the most emotionally valuable thing in the estate and the easiest to lose forever.
• Cryptocurrency and digital wallets — Bitcoin, Ethereum, and tokens on exchanges like Coinbase or in a self-custodied wallet secured by a seed phrase.
• Loyalty and stored value — airline miles, hotel points, and PayPal or Venmo balances. Some convert to cash for an estate; many do not, and the rules are set by the provider.
• Business and creative property — domain names, a monetized YouTube channel, an Etsy shop, manuscripts, or photography portfolios.
• Subscriptions and recurring charges — streaming services and software that keep billing a closed bank account long after death.

Two things people confuse: ownership versus access

Here is a distinction that trips up even sophisticated families. You may own the money inside an account without having the legal right to make the company hand over the contents. Your iTunes movie library and Kindle books, for instance, are usually licensed to you personally and do not transfer at death the way a paperback in your bookcase would. Knowing which assets carry real value, which carry only sentimental value, and which simply evaporate is half the planning work.

Why a Florida Will Alone Won’t Open the Accounts

Clients often assume that naming someone as executor in a will automatically lets that person walk into every account. It does not, for two overlapping reasons.

First, federal privacy and computer-fraud laws make it unlawful for a provider to disclose the contents of your communications, and arguably unlawful for your executor to log in using your password, unless you authorized it. Companies built their terms of service around those laws. So even a grieving spouse with the right password can technically be violating an agreement by signing in.

Second, Florida solved part of this with Chapter 740, the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which took effect July 1, 2016. The statute creates an orderly priority system, but it puts you in the driver’s seat. The controlling order generally runs like this:

1. An online tool offered by the provider itself — Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Apple’s Legacy Contact, for example. If you use one of these and it lets you name a recipient, that choice usually wins, even over your will.
2. Your estate planning documents — if you did not use an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, or power of attorney control, including any consent you gave to disclose the content of communications.
3. The provider’s terms of service — the default contract you clicked through, which applies only when you left the first two blank.

The lesson for Palm Beach families is simple. Silence does not mean your spouse or children get access. Silence usually means the platform’s fine print decides, and that fine print rarely favors the family.

How to Build Digital Assets Into Your Plan

1. Take inventory, then keep it somewhere safe and updated

Start with a living inventory of accounts. I tell clients not to write passwords into the will itself, because a will becomes a public record once it is filed with the Palm Beach County Clerk during probate. Instead, list the accounts in the plan and store the actual credentials separately, ideally in a reputable password manager whose master access is provided for in your documents. Review the list when you review your plan, which for active snowbirds usually means every couple of years.

2. Grant explicit authority in three documents

Effective drafting touches each instrument that governs a different phase of life:

• Durable power of attorney — for digital access while you are alive but incapacitated. Florida powers of attorney must specifically enumerate certain authorities, so the digital-asset language has to be deliberate, not assumed.
• Will — empowering your personal representative to access, manage, and close accounts during probate, with the express consent to disclosure that Chapter 740 looks for.
• Revocable living trust — for any digital property you choose to title in or assign to the trust, so it can pass without probate at all. For high-value or sensitive holdings, this is often the cleanest path.

3. Use the platforms’ own legacy tools

Because an online tool sits at the top of the priority order, set those up while you are organizing the rest. Apple lets you designate a Legacy Contact. Google’s Inactive Account Manager can release data or delete an account after a period of inactivity. Facebook allows a legacy contact to memorialize a profile. These take ten minutes each and can spare your family months of customer-service letters and death certificates.

4. Plan crypto separately and carefully

Cryptocurrency deserves its own paragraph because it is unforgiving. If the seed phrase to a self-custodied wallet dies with you, the coins are gone, full stop. No court order, no statute, and no lawyer can recover them. The plan has to ensure a trusted fiduciary can find and reconstruct access without that information ever appearing in a public probate filing. This is where a trust, paired with secure custody of recovery phrases, earns its keep.

Special Concerns for Snowbirds and Out-of-State Families

Seasonal residents face a wrinkle most year-round Floridians do not. If you keep a homestead in Palm Beach and another residence up north, your domicile determines which state’s probate law governs your intangible property, including most digital assets. Establishing Florida as your legal domicile, with no state income tax and a generous homestead protection, is one of the better reasons many of my clients moved here. But domicile has to be documented, and a stale will from your former state can pull your estate back into a slower, costlier probate up north.

There is also the practical reality of distance. When the named executor lives in Boston and the accounts were administered from a laptop in Florida, even basic tasks slow down. Clear written authority, a current inventory, and the platform legacy tools all shrink the gap between where your family is and where your digital life was managed.

Common Mistakes I See in Palm Beach Estates

• Writing passwords into the will. It becomes public; it also goes stale the moment you change a password.
• Assuming a joint account login is enough. Sharing a Netflix password is not a plan, and it does not authorize an executor to manage a brokerage account.
• Ignoring the inbox. Lose the email account and you often lose the ability to reset every other login.
• Forgetting recurring charges. Subscriptions can keep draining an estate account for a year before anyone notices.
• Never updating the legacy tools after a phone upgrade or new email. A designation pointing at a defunct address helps no one.

Where This Fits in a Broader Plan

Digital assets are one piece of a coordinated Florida estate plan that also addresses your will, incapacity planning, and how your estate moves through Florida probate. For families managing assets in more than one state, or planning around beneficiaries with disabilities, the structure matters as much as the documents. If a loved one receives needs-based benefits, for example, a poorly drafted gift of an account or a crypto windfall can disrupt eligibility, which is exactly why tools like a exist and why digital holdings should be folded into the same conversation. The broader family of gives you control over how, when, and to whom both traditional and digital wealth passes.

Our Florida team handles this work locally for Palm Beach residents and seasonal visitors. You can learn more about our approach to , and when you are ready to put a plan in place, our office is glad to sit down with you to inventory what you own online and make sure the right people can reach it.

The Bottom Line

Your digital life is real property, even when you cannot hold it in your hand. Florida gives you the tools to control it through Chapter 740, but the statute only helps the families who used those tools in advance. A few hours spent now, building an inventory, granting clear authority, and setting platform legacy contacts, can save your spouse and children from locked accounts, lost photographs, and unrecoverable assets later. For snowbirds especially, getting it right under Florida law while you are healthy and present is the gift that keeps your estate from going quiet at the worst possible moment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Florida law let my executor access my online accounts automatically?

No. Under Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (Chapter 740, Florida Statutes), your personal representative generally needs authority you granted in advance through an online tool offered by the provider, or through your will, trust, or power of attorney. Simply being named executor does not unlock email, cloud storage, or financial portals, and federal privacy law can make unauthorized logins risky.

Should I put my passwords in my will?

No. A will becomes a public record once it is filed for probate with the Palm Beach County Clerk, and passwords change constantly. Instead, reference the accounts in your documents, grant explicit authority to your fiduciary, and store the actual credentials separately, such as in a secure password manager whose access you provide for in your plan.

What happens to my cryptocurrency if I die without a plan?

If the seed phrase or private key to a self-custodied wallet is lost, the cryptocurrency is unrecoverable, regardless of any court order or statute. Coins held on an exchange may be reachable by an authorized fiduciary, but self-custodied assets require that a trusted person can locate and reconstruct access. A trust paired with secure custody of recovery information is usually the safest approach.

I'm a snowbird who spends winters in Palm Beach. Which state's law controls my digital assets?

Generally the law of your legal domicile governs your intangible property, including most digital assets. If you have established Florida as your domicile, Florida’s Chapter 740 typically applies. Documenting that domicile and updating any out-of-state will is important, because an old will from your former state can pull your estate into a slower, costlier probate elsewhere.

What are platform legacy tools and why do they matter?

Legacy tools are settings the provider offers, such as Apple’s Legacy Contact, Google’s Inactive Account Manager, and Facebook’s legacy contact. Under Florida’s priority system, a valid online-tool designation usually controls over instructions in your will. Setting them up takes only minutes per account and can save your family months of paperwork.