Digital assets in a New York estate plan are the online accounts, files, and electronic records you control during life that need to pass to someone else at death or incapacity: email, cloud storage, cryptocurrency, brokerage logins, domain names, loyalty points, photo libraries, and any business presence that lives on a server. Under New York’s Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL) Article 13-A, your executor, trustee, agent, or guardian can gain lawful authority over these assets, but only if your documents grant it and the rules around custodian disclosure are satisfied. For high-net-worth Manhattan families, treating digital property as an afterthought is one of the most common and most expensive planning gaps.
I have sat across the table from executors who could see seven figures in a crypto wallet and could not legally or technically touch a dollar of it. I have watched a decedent’s online business quietly stop functioning because no one had the domain registrar password. This article walks through how New York actually handles digital assets, what the statute does and does not give your fiduciaries, and the concrete steps to build this into a plan that protects substantial wealth.
Why digital assets deserve their own conversation
A generation ago, an estate was paper: deeds, stock certificates, a safe deposit box, a checkbook. Today a meaningful slice of a Manhattan client’s net worth and almost all of the access to it sits behind passwords and two-factor authentication. The problem is twofold. First, federal privacy laws and the terms of service you clicked “agree” on can criminalize unauthorized account access even by a well-meaning spouse. Second, many digital assets are functionally invisible: if you do not leave a roadmap, your fiduciary may never learn the account exists.
For affluent families pursuing asset protection, the stakes are higher. Cryptocurrency held in self-custody is unrecoverable if the private keys die with you. Carried interest dashboards, private fund investor portals, and family-office accounting platforms all gate real value behind credentials. A plan that ignores them leaves wealth stranded.
What counts as a digital asset
- Currency-like assets: Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, NFTs, and the keys or seed phrases that control them.
- Financial access points: online brokerage, banking, and retirement logins (the account is the asset; the login is the door).
- Stored content: cloud photos, documents, and backups in iCloud, Google, Dropbox, or a private server.
- Communications: email and messaging accounts, which often hold the breadcrumbs to everything else.
- Revenue-producing digital property: domain names, monetized social channels, e-commerce stores, intellectual property, and software licenses.
- Loyalty and miscellany: airline miles, hotel points, gaming assets, and subscription credits.
New York’s framework: EPTL Article 13-A
New York adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified at EPTL Article 13-A. It is the controlling law, and it does something elegant: it builds a three-tier hierarchy that decides who controls disclosure of your digital assets.
- An online tool, if the custodian offers one. If a platform lets you name a person to manage or inherit your account directly through its own settings, that designation controls, even over your will. Apple’s Legacy Contact and Google’s Inactive Account Manager are the classic examples.
- Your estate planning documents. If you have not used an online tool, the directions in your will, trust, power of attorney, or other record govern, and you may grant or restrict fiduciary access there.
- The provider’s terms of service. If you addressed the account in neither of the first two tiers, the default terms of service decide, and those defaults are frequently restrictive.
The practical lesson is that you cannot simply assume your will reaches every account. If you set an online tool designation and then sign a will that says something different, the online tool usually wins. Alignment between the platform settings and your documents matters as much as the documents themselves.
The content-versus-catalog distinction
Article 13-A separates the content of electronic communications, the actual text of your emails and messages, from the catalog, the metadata showing that a message was sent, when, and to whom. Custodians may disclose content only when you have specifically consented, typically through the online tool or explicit language in your documents. The catalog faces a lower bar. So a clause that says “my executor may access my email” may get the catalog but not the contents unless it is drafted to grant access to content. This is precisely the kind of nuance that separates competent drafting from a downloaded form.
Building digital access into your core documents
New York gives your fiduciaries no inherent right to your digital life. The authority has to be written in. Each instrument carries a different piece of the load.
Your will and the executor
A New York will admitted to probate in Surrogate’s Court empowers your executor to marshal assets, but generic boilerplate rarely satisfies a custodian’s legal department. Your will should expressly authorize the executor to access, manage, and dispose of digital assets, including the content of electronic communications, with language tracking EPTL Article 13-A. Because the will becomes a public record once filed in Surrogate’s Court, you never put passwords or seed phrases in it; you grant authority in the document and store credentials separately.
Revocable living trusts
For Manhattan clients with significant or privacy-sensitive holdings, a is often the better vehicle for digital assets. A trust avoids the public, court-supervised probate process, so the successor trustee can act immediately and discreetly. Assets titled in or assigned to the trust, including a cryptocurrency holding structured properly, pass under the trustee’s authority without a Surrogate’s Court proceeding. The trust instrument should contain its own Article 13-A digital-asset powers so the successor trustee can deal with custodians directly. For families layering in protective planning for a vulnerable heir, coordinating digital and financial assets with a ensures an inheritance does not inadvertently disqualify a beneficiary from needs-based benefits.
The statutory durable power of attorney
Death is only half the risk. Incapacity is the other half, and a stroke or dementia diagnosis can lock you out of your own accounts while you are still alive. New York’s statutory durable power of attorney under General Obligations Law (GOL) 5-1501 lets your named agent act for you. The current statutory short form includes authority touching access to digital assets, but you should confirm your power of attorney is the updated form and that it grants Article 13-A authority and content access explicitly. An old power of attorney signed years ago may predate these provisions entirely.
Health care proxy
A New York health care proxy names someone to make medical decisions if you cannot. It is not a digital-asset tool, but it belongs in the same conversation because incapacity planning is incomplete without it, and the health care agent often needs to coordinate with the financial agent who holds the digital keys.
Asset protection considerations for high-net-worth families
Wealthy New Yorkers face exposures that ordinary planning checklists miss. A few deserve direct attention.
Cryptocurrency self-custody. If you hold keys in a hardware wallet, no custodian and no statute can recover them. The plan has to physically deliver the seed phrase to the right person at the right moment, through a sealed letter held by counsel, a qualified custodian, or a secure multi-signature arrangement, without exposing it during your life. EPTL Article 13-A helps with exchange-held crypto; it does nothing for keys nobody can find.
Privacy and the public record. Probate filings in Surrogate’s Court are public. High-profile families often prefer trust-based plans precisely so the inventory of valuable digital and financial holdings never appears in an open court file.
The spousal right of election. Under EPTL 5-1.1-A, a surviving spouse in New York is entitled to elect against the estate for the greater of $50,000 or one-third of the net estate. Digital assets of real value, a crypto portfolio or a monetized business, count toward that calculation. If your plan tries to route significant digital wealth away from a spouse without accounting for the elective share, expect a challenge. Coordinated drafting prevents that surprise.
Multistate footprint. Many Manhattan families also hold property or spend time in Florida. Each state has its own version of the fiduciary access act, so a snowbird’s plan should be reviewed in both jurisdictions; our affiliated Florida estate planning team coordinates on dual-residency matters.
A practical digital estate plan checklist
- Inventory. List every account, wallet, domain, and platform of value. Update it at least annually.
- Set the online tools. Use Apple Legacy Contact, Google Inactive Account Manager, and similar built-in designations, and make sure they match your documents.
- Grant Article 13-A authority. Confirm your will, trust, and power of attorney each contain explicit digital-asset and content-access language.
- Separate the credentials. Store passwords and seed phrases in a password manager or secured letter, never in the will itself, and tell your fiduciary how to reach them.
- Plan for self-custody crypto. Build a secure, lawful path to the keys for the person who will need them.
- Coordinate with the elective share and beneficiaries. Make sure digital wealth does not blow up your spousal or special-needs planning.
- Review after life changes. Marriage, divorce, a new fund, a sold business, or a move all trigger an update.
What happens if you do nothing
Without planning, your fiduciary is left negotiating with custodians under restrictive default terms of service, sometimes needing a Surrogate’s Court order under the SCPA just to compel disclosure, and even then content may stay sealed. Small estates may use voluntary administration under SCPA Article 13, but that path is capped and ill-suited to substantial digital wealth. Self-custody crypto with lost keys is simply gone. The avoidable outcome is real money evaporating because no one wrote a few paragraphs and stored a sealed envelope.
Digital assets are not a niche concern anymore; for affluent Manhattan families they are often where the value and the access live. A well-built plan names the right people, grants them the right authority under New York law, and gets the keys into their hands at the right time. If your current documents predate this conversation, it is worth a focused review. Learn more about our New York wills and Surrogate’s Court probate services, or contact our Manhattan office to start the conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my executor automatically access my email and online accounts in New York?
No. New York’s EPTL Article 13-A gives fiduciaries no automatic right to your digital accounts. Your executor needs explicit authority granted in your will, and even then the content of emails may stay sealed unless your documents specifically grant access to content. Platform online tools, like Apple Legacy Contact or Google Inactive Account Manager, can override your will, so they should be aligned with your plan.
What law governs digital assets in a New York estate?
EPTL Article 13-A, New York’s version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, controls. It uses a three-tier hierarchy: a custodian’s online tool first, then your estate documents (will, trust, or power of attorney), then the provider’s terms of service as the default.
How should I handle cryptocurrency in my estate plan?
It depends on custody. Exchange-held crypto can be reached through Article 13-A authority in your documents, much like any online financial account. Self-custodied crypto in a hardware wallet cannot be recovered by any statute, so your plan must securely deliver the seed phrase or private keys to a trusted person, often through a sealed letter held by counsel or a multi-signature arrangement, without exposing them during your life.
Should digital assets go in a will or a trust?
For many high-net-worth Manhattan families a revocable living trust is preferable, because it avoids the public, court-supervised probate process and lets a successor trustee act immediately and privately. A will works too, but it becomes a public record once filed in Surrogate’s Court, so either way you grant authority in the document and store credentials separately.
Do digital assets count toward a spouse's right of election in New York?
Yes. Under EPTL 5-1.1-A a surviving spouse can elect against the estate for the greater of $50,000 or one-third of the net estate, and valuable digital assets such as a crypto portfolio or a monetized online business count toward that figure. Plans that try to route digital wealth away from a spouse without accounting for the elective share can be challenged.
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