What Happens to Digital Assets in My Will?

Your online life does not disappear when you do. Photos, email, financial logins, and even cryptocurrency can outlive you, and without a plan they can become locked away where no one can reach them. The Law Office of Chad Foster helps Snohomish County clients with wills and trusts.

Digital Assets Are Part of Your Estate

When most people picture an estate, they think of a house, a bank account, and a few boxes of keepsakes. Today, a growing share of what you own and value lives online. Your digital assets include email accounts, cloud photo libraries, social media profiles, online banking and brokerage logins, domain names, loyalty points, subscription services, and cryptocurrency held in exchanges or private wallets. Some of these have real financial value. Others are priceless in a personal sense, like a decade of family photos stored in the cloud. Either way, someone will need lawful authority to find, access, and manage them after you are gone, and that authority does not happen automatically just because you named an executor.

Washington Has a Law for This

Washington addresses digital assets directly through the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, found at chapter 11.120 RCW. This law gives a personal representative, a trustee, an agent under a power of attorney, or a court-appointed guardian a legal pathway to access a person's digital assets, subject to important limits. The statute sets an order of priority for how your wishes are honored. If an online service offers an in-account tool that lets you name who can access your account, that direction controls. If you have not used such a tool, the directions in your will, trust, or power of attorney control next. Only if you have left no direction at all does the service provider's terms-of-service agreement govern. That ordering, laid out in RCW 11.120.040, is the single most important reason to think about digital assets before there is a crisis. For related guidance, see What Happens If You Die Without a Will in Washington.

Why Your Will Alone May Not Be Enough

A common assumption is that naming an executor in your will hands that person the keys to everything, including your inbox and your crypto. It does not work that way. Federal privacy laws and the terms you agreed to when you opened each account can block access even to a properly appointed representative. Chapter 11.120 RCW is what bridges that gap, but it works best when you have taken affirmative steps. Under RCW 11.120.040, your fiduciary's access follows your directions, and a provider's online tool can override even what your will says. So if you use a platform's legacy contact or account-access feature and name one person there, but name someone else in your will, the online tool wins. Coordinating those choices matters. A will that says "my executor may access my digital accounts" gives your representative a stronger footing under the statute, but it is not a substitute for using the in-account tools your providers offer. For related guidance, see Do I Need a Will in Washington.

Planning for Email, Photos, and Accounts

Start by taking an inventory. Make a list of the accounts that matter, both financially and sentimentally, and note which ones offer a built-in legacy or account-access setting. Email is often the master key, because password resets for nearly everything route through it, so decide who should be able to reach it and grant that access where the provider allows. For photo and cloud storage, use any legacy contact feature the service provides so a trusted person can retrieve those memories. For social media, many platforms let you choose in advance whether an account should be memorialized or deleted. Your estate planning documents can then reinforce these choices by expressly authorizing your fiduciary to access digital assets under chapter 11.120 RCW. What you should not do is write passwords into your will itself, because a will becomes a public record once it is filed with the court in probate, and Snohomish County probate filings are no exception.

Cryptocurrency Needs Special Care

Cryptocurrency deserves its own attention because it behaves differently from a bank account. If you hold crypto on an exchange, your fiduciary may be able to reach it through the exchange's process, and chapter 11.120 RCW supports that request. But if you hold crypto in a private wallet, access depends entirely on the private keys or seed phrase. There is no customer service line and no password reset. If no one can find the keys, the assets are effectively gone forever, and no statute can recover them. That means your plan must include a secure, private method for a trusted person to locate the keys without exposing them during your lifetime. Some people use a sealed letter of instruction kept with their attorney, a secure password manager with an emergency access feature, or a hardware device stored where a named person can find it. The right approach depends on how much crypto you hold and how comfortable you are with technology, but the principle is constant: the law can grant authority, yet it cannot conjure a lost key.

Putting It Together

Good digital asset planning weaves together three layers: the in-account tools your providers offer, clear language in your will and any trust or power of attorney, and a secure way to convey the information your fiduciary will actually need. Chapter 11.120 RCW gives Washington families a workable legal framework, but the framework only functions when you have used it deliberately. For families across Snohomish County, this is fast becoming as ordinary a part of estate planning as deciding who inherits the house.

If you would like help making sure your digital life is accounted for alongside the rest of your estate, the Law Office of Chad Foster is here to walk through it with you and build a plan that fits your situation.