Including Digital Assets in Your Boca Raton Estate Plan

Your life is online, and so is a growing share of your estate. Photos in the cloud, an email account that controls password resets, a cryptocurrency wallet, loyalty points, and even small businesses run through social media all count as digital assets. Yet most Boca Raton estate plans, even careful ones, say nothing about them. Florida law gives you tools to fix that, but only if you use them.

What Counts as a Digital Asset

Think broadly. Digital assets include email and cloud storage, online banking and brokerage logins, cryptocurrency and exchange accounts, photo and video libraries, domain names, social media profiles, and subscription and rewards accounts. Some hold real money. Others hold irreplaceable memories. All of them can be lost forever if no one can access them after you are gone.

Florida Gives Your Fiduciary a Path

Florida has adopted the Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which lets you authorize a personal representative, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney to access your digital accounts. The key word is authorize. Without clear permission, federal privacy and anti-hacking laws plus the platforms’ own terms of service can block even a well-meaning family member from logging in, no matter what your will says.

Use the Platform’s Own Tools First

Many services now offer built-in controls that take priority over your other documents. Some let you name a legacy contact who can manage your account after death. Others provide an inactive account manager that decides what happens after a period of inactivity. Boca Raton residents should set these up directly with each provider, because under the Florida act these online directions generally override instructions buried in a will or trust.

Put Authority in Your Core Documents

Where a platform offers no tool, your legal documents carry the load. A Florida durable power of attorney under Chapter 709 can grant your agent authority over digital assets while you are alive but incapacitated. Your will and revocable trust can extend that authority to your personal representative and trustee after death. Specific, written permission is what unlocks lawful access.

The Inventory Most People Skip

Even with full legal authority, your fiduciary needs to know what exists and how to reach it. Keep a current list of your accounts and where to find login information, stored securely, never inside the will itself, which becomes a public record in probate. A password manager with an emergency-access feature is one practical option. For a Boca Raton snowbird splitting time between Florida and the north, a single secure inventory beats scattered notes in two homes.

Cryptocurrency Needs Extra Care

Crypto is unforgiving. If your private keys or seed phrase die with you, the assets are gone, and no court order can recover them. Build a clear, secure plan for how a trusted fiduciary will locate and access any wallets, while keeping that information out of public documents.

A Note Before You Start

Digital assets sit at the intersection of Florida law, federal privacy rules, and each company’s policies. Before you finalize your plan, work with a licensed Florida estate planning attorney to add proper digital-asset authority to your will, trust, and durable power of attorney. A little structure now keeps your Boca Raton family from being locked out of the parts of your estate that live online.