Digital asset

What it means

Digital assets divide into two kinds: things with financial value, and things with only personal value. Both can be difficult to reach, and for different reasons.

Access is governed by the provider's terms of service and by federal computer access law, not only by who has the password. Sharing a password is not the same as having authority.

Most states have adopted a law giving a fiduciary a route to access, but it usually depends on what the account holder said in the provider's own online tool or in their will.

Why it matters

Photographs and correspondence are frequently what a family most wants and least expects to lose, and providers delete accounts on schedules of their own.

It is also where a well-meant shortcut creates real exposure: logging in as somebody else, even a parent, is not authorized access.

When you are likely to meet it

• When a parent's accounts have to be reached or closed.
• When planning what should happen to your own accounts.
• When a provider refuses to discuss an account with the family.

How this varies by state

Which version of the fiduciary access law a state has adopted, and what it permits, are set by state law.

Related terms

• Beneficiary designationA named person on an account or policy who receives it directly on death, without it passing through the will or probate.
• Catalog of electronic communicationsThe list of who was written to and when — as distinct from what the messages said.
• 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.
• EstateEverything the person owned at the moment they died, treated as one thing that has to be settled.
• ExecutorThe person named in a will to carry it out — once a court actually appoints them.
• Fiduciary dutyThe obligation to act for somebody else's benefit rather than your own — and to be able to show you did.
• 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.
• Letter of instructionAn informal document left alongside a will, saying the practical things a will has no room for.
• 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

• Digital legacy
• Identity theft after a death