Most California estate plans say nothing about online accounts, cryptocurrency, or digital property. Here is what happens to those assets by default, and how to make sure they end up where you intend.
Key Takeaways:
- California adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, giving executors and trustees limited authority over digital accounts, but only if your plan grants it.
- Cryptocurrency, digital businesses, and online accounts can have real financial value that disappears entirely if no one knows they exist or how to access them.
- A complete estate plan accounts for digital assets explicitly, including access instructions, tax treatment, and how each asset should be handled after your death.
Think about how much of your life lives online. Bank accounts you access through an app. Investment platforms you’ve never visited in person. Email archives going back fifteen years. A social media presence your family might want to preserve, or close. And for a growing number of Californians, cryptocurrency holdings that exist nowhere except on a blockchain, accessible only through a private key that only you know.
Now ask: what happens to all of it when you die?
For most people, the honest answer is they don’t know. Their estate plan, if they have one, was built around a house, a bank account, maybe a retirement fund. The attorney asked about the obvious things. No one asked about the Coinbase account, the PayPal balance, the domain names generating passive income, or the cloud storage full of irreplaceable photos.
This isn’t a niche concern anymore. Digital assets are now part of nearly every California estate, and the gap between what most plans cover and what families actually own is widening every year.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. It just requires asking questions that most estate plans never raise.
What Counts as a Digital Asset in California
The term covers more ground than most people expect. California’s version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act defines a digital asset broadly as any electronic record in which someone has a right or interest. In practical terms, that includes:
- Cryptocurrency and digital tokens (Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, and similar holdings)
- Online bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and PayPal or Venmo balances
- Email accounts, cloud storage, and digital photo libraries
- Social media profiles, blogs, and websites that generate income
- Domain names, software licenses, and subscription services with transferable value
- Loyalty points, airline miles, and gaming accounts with real-money balances
Some of these have direct financial value. Others have sentimental value that your family would want to preserve. And some, if not handled correctly, simply disappear.
What California Law Says About Digital Asset Access After Death
California adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) to address this gap. The law gives executors, trustees, and other fiduciaries a legal pathway to access digital assets after a person’s death or incapacity. But the law comes with an important limitation: it works best when your estate plan specifically authorizes it.
Without that authorization, your executor or successor trustee may find their access blocked by the platform’s own terms of service, which often take priority. Many major platforms, including Google, Apple, and Meta, have their own legacy tools and policies that interact with California law in ways that aren’t always straightforward.
The California State Bar’s legal guides address fiduciary duties and estate administration broadly, but the digital asset layer requires specific language in your trust and powers of attorney to be effective. A generic plan that simply names a trustee does not automatically grant them the access they will need.
Why Cryptocurrency Requires Its Own Planning
Cryptocurrency is the digital asset category that carries the highest risk of permanent loss. Unlike a bank account, which has a recovery process and federal insurance, crypto held in a self-custody wallet exists only through a private key. If that key is lost, the funds are gone. There is no customer service line, no court order that can recover it.
For California families with crypto holdings, this creates two distinct planning challenges.
Access. Your successor trustee needs to know the asset exists and how to reach it. That means documenting wallet addresses, exchange accounts, and private keys in a secure location that is referenced in your estate plan, without exposing that information to anyone who shouldn’t have it during your lifetime.
Tax treatment. Cryptocurrency is treated as property by the IRS, meaning every transfer, sale, or exchange is a taxable event. When a beneficiary inherits crypto, the tax basis is stepped up to the fair market value at the date of death, which can significantly reduce capital gains exposure. Getting that right requires both legal and accounting precision, exactly the combination Darin Karpel brings as both an attorney and a CPA.
The IRS estate and gift tax guidance addresses cryptocurrency as part of the overall estate valuation, and the rules for reporting and basis calculation are areas where legal and tax planning overlap directly.
If your estate plan doesn’t address your digital assets, now is the right time to fix that. Schedule your free consultation today, and we’ll make sure your full estate is covered.
How to Include Digital Assets in Your California Estate Plan
Incorporating digital assets into an existing or new estate plan involves a few specific steps that go beyond what most standard plans address.
Create a digital asset inventory. Document every account, platform, and asset with enough information for a successor trustee to locate and access it. This includes usernames, account numbers, and instructions for where to find credentials. This document should be stored securely and updated regularly, and it should be referenced in your trust without sensitive login details appearing in the trust document itself, which becomes part of a public record if probate is ever involved.
Grant explicit authority in your trust. Your revocable living trust should include language that specifically authorizes your successor trustee to access, manage, transfer, or terminate digital accounts on your behalf. Generic trustee powers language may not be sufficient under California’s RUFADAA framework.
Update platform legacy settings. Many platforms now offer legacy contact or inactive account manager features. Google’s Inactive Account Manager and Facebook’s Legacy Contact allow you to designate someone to access or memorialize your account. These settings work alongside your estate plan, not instead of it.
Address digital income and business assets separately. If you operate a website, online business, or content platform that generates income, those assets need business succession planning, not just an estate plan update. The income stream, the intellectual property, and the platform accounts all require separate consideration.
The CPA-Attorney Advantage for Digital Asset Planning
Digital assets sit at the intersection of law and tax in a way that most estate planning attorneys aren’t fully equipped to handle alone. The legal questions, who has authority, how access is granted, how assets are transferred, are one layer. The tax questions, what the basis is, when a taxable event occurs, how gains are reported, are another layer entirely.
Because Darin Karpel holds both a California law license and a CPA designation, both layers are reviewed in every estate plan the Karpel Law Firm builds. For clients with cryptocurrency, digital business income, or significant online account balances, that dual perspective isn’t a bonus feature. It’s the only way to make sure the plan actually works.
Most law firms handle the legal documents and tell clients to talk to their accountant separately. At the Karpel Law Firm, that conversation happens in the same room, with the same person, as part of the same engagement.
What to Do If Your Current Plan Doesn’t Cover Digital Assets
If you already have a trust or will in place, there is a good chance your digital assets aren’t addressed. This is true even for plans that were drafted recently. The digital asset landscape has changed faster than most estate planning practice has kept up.
A plan review doesn’t require starting from scratch. In most cases, the existing trust can be amended to include digital asset authority, and a standalone digital asset memorandum can be created to document the inventory without modifying the trust itself each time an account changes.
The wills and trusts team at the Karpel Law Firm regularly helps clients update existing plans to account for assets that weren’t on anyone’s radar when the original documents were signed. The process is straightforward, and the protection it adds is significant.
Digital assets are real assets. If your estate plan doesn’t account for them, your family may never see them, and some may be lost permanently. Our experienced estate planning attorneys at the Karpel Law Firm are here to make sure that doesn’t happen. Contact the Karpel Law Firm today to schedule your complimentary consultation.