Most people think of estate planning as a process that accounts for houses, bank accounts, retirement funds, and personal property. The financial and legal picture has always been more complicated than that, but it has never been more complicated than it is right now.
Artificial intelligence tools, cloud-based accounts, cryptocurrency, and monetized digital content have created an entire category of property that traditional estate plans were never designed to address.
Digital estate planning is the process of identifying your online accounts and digital property, deciding how each should be handled, and building the legal authority into your estate plan to make that happen.
Done right, it protects real financial value. Done poorly, or not at all, it leaves your family facing locked accounts, inaccessible files, and decisions they were never prepared to make.
Digital Assets Defined
The category is broader than most people realize. Online bank and investment accounts, cryptocurrency wallets, and PayPal balances are obvious examples.
Less obvious are the assets with real financial value that tend to get overlooked: monetized YouTube channels, websites with ad revenue, digital storefronts, domain names, and loyalty program balances.
Sentimental assets matter too. Cloud storage accounts, like Google Drive, iCloud, and Dropbox, often hold decades of family photos, videos, and documents. Email accounts frequently contain business records, subscription confirmations, and financial correspondence.
Without a plan, none of these are automatically accessible to the people you leave behind.
AI-generated content adds a newer layer of complexity. If you create content using AI tools, publish AI-assisted work, or hold licenses to AI-generated material, those assets have potential value. Your estate plan should address them the same way it would address any other intellectual or digital property.
RUFADAA Implications
Connecticut enacted the Connecticut Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) in 2016. That law gives your fiduciaries, including your executor, trustee, and agent under a durable power of attorney, legal authority to access and manage your digital assets, but only if you grant that permission.
Without that authorization, access is limited. Your executor may be able to obtain a catalog of communications, meaning records of who you contacted and when, but not the content of those communications.
Full access to the content of emails, messages, and other electronic communications requires your explicit prior consent. Service providers operate under their own terms-of-service agreements, and those agreements often prohibit third-party access regardless of what your family needs.
The practical implication is straightforward: Connecticut’s law creates a framework, but the framework only works if your legal documents reference your digital property and authorize your fiduciaries to act.
A will or trust drafted before digital assets were a consideration almost certainly lacks the specific language needed.
The Three-Tier Access System
RUFADAA establishes a priority order for how fiduciary access is determined. At the top are online tools, the in-platform settings that some services offer to designate a legacy contact or account manager.
Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Memorialization Settings are examples. Whatever you set in those tools overrides everything else, including what your will says. Keeping those designations current and consistent with your overall estate plan matters.
When no online tool has been set, your legal documents control. A will, trust, or power of attorney that expressly authorizes access gives your fiduciary a legal basis to request it.
Many service providers require additional documentation, including certified proof of appointment, a death certificate, and sometimes a court order, but authorization in your legal documents starts the process.
At the bottom of the priority order is the service provider’s own terms of service. If you have set nothing and your documents say nothing, the company’s policies govern, and those policies frequently result in accounts being locked, closed, or made inaccessible indefinitely.
Protecting Your Digital Identity
AI technology has added a dimension to digital estate planning that few people have considered. With enough stored data, including emails, voice recordings, photos, and videos, it is technically possible for someone to construct an AI-generated representation of a person after their death.
Federal lawmakers have taken notice. Bipartisan proposals like the NO FAKES Act are moving toward treating your voice and likeness as a property right that can be controlled and transferred after death. That legislation has not been finalized, but the direction is clear.
For now, the most practical protection is explicit instruction in your estate plan. You can specify who may access your stored communications and personal data, what should be deleted, and what restrictions should apply to how your image or voice recordings are used. Your estate planning attorney can help you translate those preferences into enforceable language.
Building a Digital Inventory
Before any legal document can do its job, you need to know what you own. Start by making a comprehensive list of every account, device, and stored repository you use.
Include the type of account, the platform, and where login credentials can be found. Note which accounts hold financial value and which hold sentimental or creative content.
Passwords should not go directly into your will. Wills become public record after probate. Instead, use a password manager or a secure encrypted document, and make sure your executor or trustee knows how to access it.
Some people name a separate digital executor, someone with the technical knowledge to manage online accounts without involving the same person handling financial assets.
Update your inventory regularly. New accounts accumulate, subscriptions change, and platforms evolve. An inventory that is two years out of date may be only marginally better than no inventory at all.
Incorporating Digital Assets Into Your Estate Plan
Digital estate planning is not a separate process. It belongs inside your comprehensive estate plan, fully integrated with your will, revocable living trust, and durable power of attorney.
Each document should reference your digital property and authorize your fiduciaries to act with appropriate specificity.
Your trust is particularly well suited to address digital assets. Because a funded revocable living trust does not pass through probate, your successor trustee can act quickly and privately, without waiting for court authorization.
That speed matters when accounts need to be accessed, closed, or managed to prevent financial loss or data exposure.
A thorough review of your existing estate plan with an attorney who understands both Connecticut law and the current digital landscape is the right place to start. Accounts, platforms, and legal standards continue to evolve, and your plan should reflect where things stand today.
We Are Here to Help!
If you would like to schedule a consultation at our Glastonbury, CT estate planning office, call us at 860-548-1000. You can use the same number to set up an appointment at our other location in Westport, and you can use our contact form to send us a message. And if you are interested in attending one of our complimentary monthly seminars, you can get the details on our seminar schedule page.
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