Think about everything you access with a password. Email accounts. Online banking. Investment platforms. Social media profiles. Cloud storage full of photos. Maybe cryptocurrency. Possibly a PayPal balance or an online business with real revenue attached to it.
All of that is part of your estate. And most people have done absolutely nothing to account for it.
Digital assets are one of the fastest-growing gaps in California estate plans, and it’s not because people don’t care. It’s because most estate planning documents were drafted before this stuff existed, and nobody thought to go back and update them.
What Actually Counts as a Digital Asset
The term sounds technical, but it covers a pretty wide range of things. Digital assets include anything you own or have rights to that exists in digital form.
Some common examples:
- Online bank and investment accounts
- Cryptocurrency and digital wallets
- PayPal, Venmo, or other payment platform balances
- Email and social media accounts
- Photos and videos stored in the cloud
- Digital music, book, or movie libraries
- Domain names and websites
- Online businesses or monetized content channels
- Loyalty points and rewards balances
Some of these have direct financial value. Others have sentimental value that matters just as much to your family. Either way, they deserve a place in your estate plan.
The Access Problem
Here’s where things get complicated. Even if your family knows these accounts exist, they may not be able to get into them. Federal law, specifically the Stored Communications Act, restricts access to electronic accounts without proper authorization. That means a grieving spouse or adult child can’t just call the platform and ask for access, even with a death certificate in hand.
Without the right legal documents in place, your family may spend months trying to recover accounts, and some of them may never be accessible at all. Cryptocurrency held in a wallet without a recorded private key is effectively gone forever.
Yee Law Group Inc. helps California families build estate plans that address exactly these gaps, so nothing valuable gets left behind.
How to Fix It in Your Estate Plan
The good news is that this is solvable. It just requires intentional planning.
Start by creating a secure digital inventory. This doesn’t mean writing your passwords into your will, which becomes a public document during probate. Instead, maintain a separate secure document or use a reputable password manager, and make sure your executor or trustee knows how to access it.
From there, work with a Sacramento estate planning lawyer to make sure your trust or will includes explicit language granting your fiduciary the authority to access, manage, and distribute digital assets. California has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which gives fiduciaries a legal framework for accessing these accounts, but only when your documents specifically authorize it.
What About Social Media Accounts?
Platforms like Facebook and Google have their own legacy policies that allow users to designate what happens to their accounts after death. These designations don’t replace your estate plan, but they’re worth setting up as an additional layer. Just make sure your choices there align with what your estate plan says.
Don’t Assume It’s Covered
If your estate plan was drafted more than a few years ago and you’ve never specifically discussed digital assets with your attorney, it’s probably not covered. That’s not a criticism. It’s just a reflection of how quickly this area of law has evolved.
A review with a Sacramento estate planning lawyer at Yee Law Group Inc. can identify the gaps in your current plan and make sure your digital life is accounted for just as carefully as everything else you’ve worked to build.
