Catalog of electronic communications

What it means

The statutes governing access to somebody else's accounts split a person's digital life in two, and this is the half that is easier to reach. The catalog is the record of the traffic: which accounts exist, who was communicated with, on what date, and the digital assets held — everything except the content of the messages themselves.

The split is not a drafting nicety. Federal privacy law makes disclosing the content of a stored communication a serious matter, so the uniform act the states adopted routes the content through a much narrower door and lets the catalog through a wider one.

For somebody helping a living parent, that means an ordinary power of attorney granting general authority is enough for the catalog. Reaching the content needs a power that expressly grants authority over the content of electronic communications, and it has to have said so before capacity went.

For a court-appointed guardian or conservator, in every state Sahvelo has read for this, the catalog is the ceiling. A hearing and an order about digital assets specifically can produce the list; nothing in those sections reaches the messages.

Why it matters

It is why a platform can refuse to show you an email and still send you a list of who it was from — and why that is a partial win rather than an insult.

It also decides what a power of attorney needs to say. The two halves are reached by different documents, and only one of the two can still be arranged after somebody has lost capacity.

When you are likely to meet it

• In a platform's reply to a request about somebody else's account.
• When reading a power of attorney to see whether it reaches an email account.
• When a court order over an estate turns out not to be an order over the digital assets.

The catalog and the content

One account, two halves, two different documents. Families discover the difference at the point of refusal.

The practical consequence is a deadline rather than a preference: the express grant has to be in a document signed while the person can still sign one.

How this varies by state

Most states have adopted a version of the same uniform act. The section numbering differs everywhere, adoption is not universal, and which court-appointed roles have a route differs — Michigan gives one to a conservator and none to a guardian.

Related terms

• ConservatorshipA court appointing somebody to manage the money and property of an adult who cannot manage it themselves.
• Content of an electronic communicationWhat the messages actually said — the half of a digital account that is hardest to reach, and impossible to arrange for after capacity is gone.
• Custodian (of a digital asset)The company holding the account — and, under the digital-assets statutes, the party an executor or agent is actually asking.
• Digital assetAn online account or file that has value or meaning — email, photographs, cloud storage, domains, currency accounts, loyalty balances.
• Durable power of attorneyA power of attorney that keeps working after the person who signed it loses the ability to make decisions — which is usually the whole point of signing one.
• GuardianshipA court appointing somebody to make decisions for an adult who cannot make them, usually about care, housing and medical treatment.
• Legacy contactA person you name inside an online account itself, whom the provider will let reach it after you die. It usually beats anything written in a will.
• Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets ActThe law, adopted in most states, that gives an executor, trustee or agent a route to a person's digital accounts.

Sahvelo guidance that uses this

• Getting into a parent's accounts