Think about everything you accessed on your phone this morning. Your bank accounts. Your investment portfolio. Your email. Your photos stored in the cloud. Maybe a cryptocurrency wallet or a PayPal balance. Now imagine that you are gone tomorrow and the person you trust most in the world has no idea how to access any of it, no passwords, no account list, and no legal authority to even ask. For a growing number of California families, this is exactly what happens, and the financial and emotional toll can be devastating.

Digital Assets Are Real Assets

When most people think about estate planning, they think about their home, their bank accounts, and maybe a life insurance policy. But in 2026, a significant portion of most people’s wealth and personal history lives online. Cryptocurrency holdings, digital brokerage accounts, online business revenue, domain names, digital media libraries, loyalty points, and even social media accounts with monetization potential are all digital assets with real financial or sentimental value. Without a plan in place, these assets can become permanently inaccessible after death, or worse, vulnerable to fraud and theft during the window when no one is monitoring them.

California Law: The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act

California recognized this problem and adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified in Probate Code Sections 870 through 884. This law, commonly referred to as RUFADAA, gives fiduciaries such as trustees, executors, and agents under a power of attorney the legal authority to access and manage a deceased or incapacitated person’s digital assets. But here is the critical detail that catches most people off guard: RUFADAA does not grant your fiduciary automatic access to everything. The law establishes a three-tier priority system that determines who gets access and how much they can see.

The Three-Tier Priority System

The first and highest priority goes to any direction you have given through an online tool provided by the platform itself. If you have used Google’s Inactive Account Manager, Apple’s Legacy Contact feature, or Facebook’s Memorialization settings to designate someone, those instructions override everything else, including your will and your trust. The second tier applies when you have not used an online tool. In that case, your estate planning documents take over. If your trust, will, or power of attorney includes specific language granting your fiduciary authority over digital assets, that language controls. The third and lowest tier is the platform’s terms of service agreement. If you have done nothing at all, the platform’s default policies determine what happens, and most platforms default to locking everything down or deleting the account entirely.

Why Your Estate Plan Needs to Address This Directly

The takeaway from RUFADAA’s priority system is straightforward: if your trust or will is silent on digital assets, you are leaving the decision to the tech companies. That is not where you want to be. A properly drafted revocable living trust or will should include specific provisions authorizing your fiduciary to access, manage, distribute, and if necessary terminate your digital accounts. It should also grant authority to access the content of electronic communications, not just account metadata, because RUFADAA draws a distinction between the two. Without explicit language addressing content access, your trustee or executor may only be able to see a catalogue of who you communicated with and when, but not the actual messages themselves.

Cryptocurrency and Digital Financial Accounts

Cryptocurrency presents a unique challenge because, unlike a traditional bank account, there is often no institution to contact. If you hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other digital currencies in a self-hosted wallet, the private keys and recovery phrases are the only way to access those funds. If those keys die with you, the assets are gone permanently. No court order, no amount of legal authority under RUFADAA, and no probate proceeding can recover them. Your estate plan should include a secure method for storing and transmitting private keys, seed phrases, and wallet access information to your successor trustee or executor. This does not mean writing them in your trust document. It means creating a secure system, whether that is an encrypted digital vault, a safety deposit box, or a carefully structured letter of instruction, that your fiduciary knows about and can access when the time comes.

Practical Steps You Can Take Now

Start by creating a comprehensive inventory of your digital assets. This should include every financial account you access online, every cryptocurrency wallet you hold, every email and cloud storage account, every social media profile, and every subscription service tied to your name. Note the platform, your username, and how to access it. Next, review your estate planning documents. If your trust or will does not specifically address digital assets and grant your fiduciary broad authority to manage them, it is time for an update. Finally, take advantage of the online tools that major platforms already offer. Setting up a Legacy Contact on Apple, an Inactive Account Manager on Google, or a memorialization contact on Facebook takes only a few minutes and ensures your wishes are honored at the highest priority level under California law.

Do Not Let Your Digital Life Disappear

Your digital assets are part of your legacy, whether they carry financial value, sentimental meaning, or both. California law provides a framework for protecting them, but only if your estate plan is built to take advantage of it. The worst outcome is not that your family has to navigate a complicated process. The worst outcome is that irreplaceable photos, significant financial holdings, or years of creative work simply vanish because no one had the authority or the information to preserve them.

Update Your Estate Plan for the Digital Age

Kushner Legal Corporation helps individuals and families across California build estate plans that account for every part of their lives, including the digital parts. Whether you need a new revocable living trust, an update to your existing plan, or guidance on how to protect cryptocurrency and online accounts, we are here to help. Contact us today at www.kushnerlegal.com to schedule a consultation.
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