Digital assets are easy to overlook in traditional estate planning, and for solo agers — without a spouse who might already share logins — the gap is often bigger.
What counts as a digital asset
- Email accounts (often the key to resetting everything else)
- Banking and investment logins
- Social media accounts
- Cloud photo storage and personal documents
- Subscriptions that should be canceled, not just left running
How to make it accessible without creating a security risk today
A password manager with an emergency access or legacy contact feature (many major ones offer this) is the cleanest solution — you control who can request access and after what waiting period, without keeping an insecure paper list lying around. If you prefer paper, store it somewhere secured (a safe, a bank box) rather than a visible notebook.
Check whether your state has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which gives your named agent legal standing to access digital accounts — most states have.