Think about how much of your life now exists online. Family photos, financial records, communications, and even valuable assets may exist primarily in digital form.
If something happens to you, will the person handling your estate know those accounts exist? More importantly, will that person have the legal authority to access them?
Digital estate planning in New Jersey helps address who can locate, access, and manage your online accounts and digital property if you die or become unable to handle those matters yourself.
A traditional will remains an important estate planning document, but your digital life often calls for additional planning so your executor or another person you have legally authorized has clearer direction for locating and appropriately managing what you leave behind.
What Counts as a Digital Asset?
A digital asset is broadly an electronic record in which you have a right or interest. Under New Jersey law, that does not automatically include an underlying asset or liability simply because you access it online. For example, electronic records connected to a bank account may be digital assets, but the money in the account remains a separate financial asset.
In everyday life, digital estate planning may involve things such as:
- email and other electronic communications
- online financial records
- cloud-stored photographs and documents
- cryptocurrency and digital wallets
- social media accounts and content
- websites and domain names
- digital business assets or monetized online content
- other electronically stored information
Some digital assets have financial value. Others contain family photographs, correspondence, business information, or records that an executor may need during estate administration.
Identifying what you have is an important first step because legal authority does not solve the problem if the person handling your affairs does not know an account or asset exists.
Can Your Executor Access Your Online Accounts After You Die?
Not simply because that person is named as executor in your will. The person handling the estate generally needs legal authority to act, and obtaining information from a particular online account can require additional steps under the account provider’s rules and applicable law.
New Jersey's digital-assets statute, the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, provides a legal framework for certain fiduciaries, including executors and other personal representatives, to request disclosure of digital assets and, in some circumstances, obtain access to an account.
What the executor can obtain depends on the type of information requested, any directions you gave during your lifetime, applicable law, and the terms governing the account.
There is also an important difference between gaining access to certain account information and gaining access to the actual content of someone's private communications.
For example, an authorized personal representative can request a catalogue identifying electronic communications without automatically receiving the substance of the emails or messages themselves. Access to that content carries additional requirements. Disclosure of the content of a deceased person's electronic communications generally requires the user's consent or a court direction, along with other required documentation.
That is why broadly giving an executor authority in a will does not necessarily resolve every digital-access concern.
Does a Will Automatically Give an Executor Access to Your Email?
No. A will can address disclosure of digital assets, but it is only one part of the legal framework governing access to online accounts.
If you have not used a qualifying online tool to give directions about disclosure, or the service has not provided one, New Jersey law allows you to address disclosure of digital assets, including the content of electronic communications, in a will, trust, power of attorney, or another record.
Some online services also let you give directions about what information can be disclosed and who can receive it after your death. For example, Google offers Inactive Account Manager, while Apple offers Legacy Contact for certain Apple Account data. If an online tool meets New Jersey's statutory requirements and allows you to modify or delete your direction at all times, that direction overrides a conflicting instruction in your estate planning documents under New Jersey law.
The practical lesson is simple: your estate planning documents and the choices you make within individual online accounts should work together.
What Happens to Cryptocurrency When You Die?
Cryptocurrency creates a distinct planning issue because inheriting the asset and being able to access it are not always the same thing.
An executor may know that cryptocurrency exists but still be unable to reach it without the information necessary to locate and access the relevant wallet or account. Depending on how the cryptocurrency is held, there may be an exchange, a custodial account, a private wallet, recovery information, or other access credentials involved.
That means cryptocurrency planning involves more than deciding who should receive the asset. The person administering the estate also needs a lawful and practical way to identify the asset and access the relevant wallet or account.
Sensitive passwords, private keys, and recovery phrases generally should not be written directly into a will. Instead, access information should be stored securely in a way that the appropriate person will know how to locate when needed, while the estate plan addresses who has authority to manage or receive the asset.
Who Can Manage Your Digital Accounts if You Become Incapacitated?
Digital planning is not only about what happens after death.
You may also need someone to manage financial accounts, electronic records, bills, or other digital property if an illness or injury leaves you unable to handle those matters yourself.
That makes your power of attorney an important part of digital estate planning in New Jersey.
New Jersey law treats the content of electronic communications differently from other digital assets. For an agent acting under a power of attorney to obtain the content of electronic communications from a custodian, the document must expressly grant that authority.
For other digital assets and catalogues of electronic communications, an agent can qualify with specific digital-asset authority or general authority to act on your behalf, subject to your directions, the power of attorney, and applicable requirements.
Reviewing your power of attorney alongside your will and other estate planning documents can help determine whether your chosen agent has the authority needed to manage today's increasingly digital financial life. At Cohler Law, we help clients consider digital-asset authority as part of planning for both incapacity and the administration of an estate.
What Should Be Included in a Digital Estate Plan?
You do not need to create an enormous catalogue of every app you have ever downloaded.
Instead, identify the accounts and information someone may realistically need to locate, manage, preserve, transfer, or close. Once you know which digital property matters, consider how it should be handled if an executor, agent, or another authorized person has to step in.
Then consider three separate questions:
- Who should receive the asset or information?
- Who should have authority to manage or access it?
- How will that person know where to find it?
Those questions are related, but they are not always answered by the same document. For example, a will may address who receives an asset, while a power of attorney, trust, or online account direction addresses a different question about authority or access.
You should also review any legacy, designated-contact, or account-management tools offered by the services you use. Your choices within those accounts should be coordinated with your will, trust, power of attorney, and overall estate plan rather than made in isolation.
Plan for Your Digital Assets With Cohler Law
When a loved one dies, families already have a long list of practical responsibilities. Trying to determine whether important financial records are buried in an email account, whether family photographs exist only in the cloud, or whether an online asset exists at all can add another layer of uncertainty.
Thoughtful planning can make those questions easier to address. For families in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties and throughout South Jersey, digital assets now belong in the same estate planning conversation as wills, trusts, powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, and other planning decisions.
At Cohler Law, our Voorhees estate planning attorneys help New Jersey families think through how the different parts of an estate plan work together. If your current plan does not address your online accounts and digital property, or those assets have changed since your documents were prepared, reviewing your plan can help determine whether updates are appropriate.
Contact Cohler Law to schedule a consultation and discuss an estate plan that reflects your family, your assets, and your wishes.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. The treatment of a particular digital account or asset depends on the account terms, estate planning documents, applicable law, and individual circumstances. Reading this article does not create an attorney-client relationship with Cohler Law.