What Counts as a Digital Asset? (And Why Your Estate Plan Is Probably Missing Them)

Your crypto. Your photos. Your PayPal balance. Your business accounts. These are all part of your estate — and most plans don’t address them.

One of the most consistent gaps I see in existing estate plans — including plans that were drafted by competent attorneys not long ago — is the absence of any meaningful digital asset structure. Not because the plans were poorly done at the time, but because the way we hold and manage value has changed significantly, and most plans haven’t kept pace.

Americans now place an average value of nearly $200,000 on their digital assets. Seventy-nine percent say protecting those assets is just as important as protecting traditional financial assets. Yet only forty-four percent of people working with advisors have ever had the topic raised. The gap between how much people value their digital holdings and how little planning exists to protect them is significant.

This post is about closing that gap.

An estate plan that doesn’t address digital assets isn’t complete. It’s out of date.

What Actually Counts as a Digital Asset

The most common misconception is that digital assets means cryptocurrency. Crypto is one category — and an important one — but the universe is much broader than that. A digital asset is any electronically stored information you own, control, use, or derive value from, along with the accounts, platforms, and devices that hold that information.

In practice, that includes far more than most people realize. Financial and asset-based accounts: online bank and brokerage accounts, crypto wallets, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, any stored value in payment platforms. Creative and intellectual property: websites, domain names, digital artwork, NFTs, monetized content, YouTube channels, blogs with revenue attached. Business and commercial digital assets: e-commerce stores, client management platforms, payroll systems, subscription services tied to business operations. Personal communications and media: years of photos and videos stored in iCloud or Google Photos, email archives, social media profiles containing personal history that cannot be recreated. Subscription and licensed digital property: digital book libraries, streaming service collections, gaming accounts with accumulated value. Loyalty programs and stored rewards: airline miles, hotel points, credit card rewards that may have real monetary value. Security and authentication infrastructure: password managers, authenticator apps, encrypted drives — the tools that control access to everything else.

That list covers most people’s daily digital life. The question isn’t whether you have digital assets. It’s whether your estate plan addresses them.

The Access Problem

Even when someone has carefully organized their financial estate — a trust, named beneficiaries, a solid power of attorney — those structures don’t automatically extend to digital accounts. The core issue is access: if your executor, successor trustee, or agent can’t get into an account, they can’t manage, transfer, or close it.

Consider what that means practically. Bills set to autodraft from an online-only bank account will continue to pull after your death unless someone with login credentials cancels them. Business operations run through digital platforms can’t continue without access to those platforms. Family photos stored in a locked cloud account may be permanently inaccessible if no one knows the password or recovery method. Cryptocurrency held in a self-custody wallet requires a private key that, if lost, means the asset is gone — not frozen, not recoverable, gone.

Most of these failures don’t happen because people didn’t care. They happen because no one thought to document access before the moment it was needed.

79% of Americans say protecting digital assets is as important as traditional ones. Only 44% have ever discussed it with an advisor.

Why Existing Plans Often Miss This

Most estate planning documents were drafted before digital assets became a dominant part of everyday financial life. A will or trust that was prepared five or ten years ago may authorize a fiduciary to manage financial accounts — but may not expressly grant authority over digital platforms, which are governed by separate terms of service and, in many states, require specific legal authorization to access.

California has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which provides a legal framework for fiduciary access to digital accounts. But that framework only works if your documents are properly drafted to invoke it. A generalized grant of financial authority is not the same as an express authorization that specifically addresses digital assets under applicable state law.

The practical implication: if your estate planning documents don’t specifically address digital assets and digital access, your executor or trustee may face legal barriers to accessing accounts even when the intent is clearly to manage your estate.

Building a Digital Asset Inventory

The most useful thing most people can do right now, before any legal documents are updated, is build a digital asset inventory. This doesn’t mean writing down your passwords in a document anyone can find. It means creating a structured record that a trusted fiduciary can use: what accounts exist, where they are held, what category of value or function they serve, and where to find the access credentials securely stored.

One practical way to approach this is to trace a typical week. What digital accounts do you log into? What bills autodraft? What platforms hold financial data, business records, or personal media? What subscriptions are active? Where is your crypto held, and what does accessing it require? That exercise tends to reveal accounts people had forgotten existed — and often surfaces the ones with the highest risk of being permanently inaccessible without advance planning.

The inventory itself should be stored securely — a reputable password manager, an encrypted vault, a fireproof safe — and the location of that inventory should be documented separately in a place your fiduciary can find it.

What This Looks Like in a Comprehensive Plan

When I conduct a Comprehensive Legacy Assessment, digital assets are a standard part of the review. That includes evaluating whether existing documents expressly authorize digital access under California law, whether a digital executor or designated digital agent has been named, whether the inventory process has been completed and is accessible, whether business digital assets are addressed in any operating or governance documents, and whether cybersecurity practices around estate documents and access credentials are sound.

Digital estate planning isn’t a separate specialty. It’s part of what a complete plan covers in 2026. If yours doesn’t address it yet, it’s worth revisiting.

Your Next Step

If you’re not sure whether your current estate plan addresses your digital assets

— or if you’ve never thought through what you actually hold in the digital space —

A c

omprehensive Legacy Assessment is a practical place to start.

It’s a structured review designed to identify exactly these kinds of gaps before they create problems.

You may schedule a complimentary 15-minute discovery call to explore next steps.