Tip of the Month | July 2026
Estate Planning for Digital Assets
Written By: Brian Ellenbecker, CFP®, EA, CIMA®, AEP®, CPWA®, CLTC®
When most people think about estate planning, they picture physical property, bank and investment accounts, and retirement investments. In today’s world, a significant portion of your estate might exist online. Digital assets include everything from email and social media accounts to cloud-stored photos, cryptocurrency holdings, online brokerage and banking logins, domain names, loyalty program points, digital subscriptions, and even monetized blogs or e-commerce stores. Without proper planning, these assets can become inaccessible, lost, or trapped behind privacy laws and provider terms of service that don’t automatically recognize your loved ones’ right to access them.
To protect these assets, your will or trust, and power of attorney should include specific language authorizing your fiduciaries to access, manage, and distribute your digital assets under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which has been adopted in most states, including Wisconsin. This language gives your executor or trustee the legal authority to work with service providers, bypass federal privacy restrictions, and follow your specific wishes about which accounts should be preserved, transferred, or deleted. Pairing this language with an up-to-date inventory of accounts and a secure method of storing passwords (such as a password manager with a designated emergency contact) ensures the authority you grant can actually be exercised.
Including the appropriate digital asset language in your estate plan ensures your estate administrators avoid potentially costly battles (time and potentially money) with tech companies, your beneficiaries can recover financially valuable assets like cryptocurrency, and sentimental items like family photos and personal correspondence remain preserved for future generations. Adding or updating this language is a relatively simple, high-impact update you can make to your plan this year.
Reach out to your Shakespeare advisor to discuss how digital asset planning applies to your estate plan.