Safeguard Your Digital Assets with Kushner Legal
People often underestimate the size and value of their digital footprint. For residents living and working in Southern California, wealth goes far beyond physical real estate and traditional bank accounts. A successful modern portfolio often consists entirely of intangible property.
Without proper legal planning, this property can completely vanish when someone passes away or loses the capacity to manage their own affairs. At Kushner Legal, we help clients protect their digital and real-world assets. Contact our team today.
What Counts as a Digital Asset in Today’s World
Clients frequently assume their digital estate only consists of old emails and saved family photos. The reality is far more complex. Living in a major entertainment and tech hub means our clients often hold unique online properties tied directly to the local film industry, creative agencies, and coastal tech startups.
- Monetized Social Media and IP. A large following on platforms like Instagram or TikTok often comes with brand sponsorships and ongoing ad revenue that needs to be transferred smoothly.
- Intellectual Property and Entertainment Assets. Creators hold digital scripts, unreleased music files, master recordings, and online royalty streams that carry immense financial value.
- Digital Business Infrastructure. Premium domain names and profitable e-commerce stores on Shopify make up a large portion of modern wealth that requires ongoing management.
- Sentimental and Practical Data. Families usually want to recover massive cloud storage libraries full of personal memories, alongside high-value frequent flyer loyalty points.
How California’s Probate Code Handles Digital Assets
Families often assume they can just call a tech company, provide a death certificate, and get full access to their loved one’s accounts. That does not happen. Federal privacy laws prevent companies from handing over user data. Statutes like the Stored Communications Act make it illegal for service providers to share your private information without clear, lawful consent.
Tech companies also rely on their own boilerplate terms of service. When you sign up for an account, you agree to their rules. Those rules almost always state that an account cannot be transferred upon death. Tech custodians are legally obligated to lock out your family members if you do not have the right legal framework in place.
California largely solved this problem by adoptingits version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA). This law bridges the gap between federal privacy regulations and state probate laws. It gives executors, trustees, and agents acting under a power of attorney the lawful authority to manage, access, or wind down digital property. However, this law only works if your estate planning documents contain the specific language required to activate it.
The Priority System That Decides Who Controls Your Accounts
The law provides a very strict hierarchy of control. This three-tier system dictates whose rules win when someone passes away or becomes incapacitated. Understanding this system is the core reason you need specialized legal counsel.
- Tier One Online Tools. Platforms sometimes offer internal settings, like an inactive account manager, to name a legacy contact. This internal choice overrides everything else in your legal documents.
- Tier Two Estate Plans. Formal legal documents govern your accounts if you never utilize a platform’s specific legacy tool. Your trust or will must explicitly state your wishes regarding digital property.
- Tier Three Terms of Service. Corporate policies dictate what happens if you die without any online tools or formal estate planning in place. This almost always results in permanently frozen accounts or immediate data deletion.
Common Incapacity Issues While Holding Significant Digital Assets
One of the most important aspects of handling digital assets is what happens when the owner is incapacitated. Unlike tangible property, such as a home or a pet, digital property cannot be informally looked after and taken care of by a family member or close friend while you are in the hospital. Additionally, even if you have a designated beneficiary who is to receive the property upon your death, that beneficiary designation does not give them any right to access or manage the digital asset while you are still alive.
For example, issues often arise with cryptocurrencies. During a bull run, you may wish to sell your Bitcoin to capitalize. But because you are incapacitated, you cannot access your Coinbase account or your digital wallet. Your beneficiaries are also frozen out.
To get around this issue, you need to designate a power of attorney (POA). But standard POA designation forms often lack the language required to let your beneficiaries or a trusted person access your digital assets. At Kushner Law, we draft modern POAs that address this issue.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Digital Assets in California Estates
What qualifies as a digital asset in my estate?
The definition of a “digital asset” is extremely broad. Generally, any electronic record in which you have a right to or interest in is a digital asset. This includes a wide variety of assets such as:
- The domain name of your business website
- Cryptocurrency wallets that might hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Solana, etc.
- Your Instagram handle and content
- Digital photographs, documents, intellectual property, and media files
Can my family just log into my accounts using my passwords after I pass away?
Legally, no. Logging into someone’s personal accounts and assuming their identity could be prosecuted as computer fraud under both state and federal law. Additionally, this usually violates the terms of service of practically every tech platform. If you try this strategy, the platform might delete important content or lock the account down permanently.
The best way to access a deceased person’s accounts is through the proper legal channels.
How can I protect my privacy and ensure sensitive digital data is deleted?
A dedicated Beverly Hills digital assets and RUFADAA lawyer can draft specific instructions inside your estate plan directing your executor to delete certain files. You can legally restrict your fiduciary from viewing the content of your communications, while still giving them the power to close the accounts and wipe the data clean.
Secure Your Digital Assets with the Kushner Legal Team Today
Digital assets are broad in scope. Every day, people pass away without an estate plan in place that accounts for them. As a result, their families and loved ones lose out on valuable assets that essentially disappear forever. If you want to secure your online legacy and protect your privacy, contact our team online today to schedule an evaluation of your estate.