If you own Bitcoin, a Venmo balance, a PayPal account, or even a valuable Instagram following, you have digital assets — and there’s a good chance your estate plan doesn’t account for them. For many Idahoans, this is a quietly growing problem that can leave families locked out of significant wealth or sentimental accounts after a loved one passes.
Here’s what you need to know.
Idaho Has a Law for This — But It Has Limits
In 2017, Idaho adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (codified at Idaho Code §§ 15-12-101 et seq.). This law gives your executor, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney the legal authority to access and manage your digital assets after death or incapacity — but only under the right conditions.
The key word is authority. The law gives your fiduciary the legal right to request access; it doesn’t guarantee the platform will cooperate. And critically, it creates a hierarchy that many people don’t realize exists.
The Three-Tier Hierarchy
Under Idaho’s law, how your digital assets are handled depends on what tools you’ve used:
1. Online tools come first. If a platform offers its own legacy or beneficiary designation tool — like Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact — that designation controls above everything else, including your will.
2. Your estate planning documents come second. If no online tool exists or was used, a will, trust, or power of attorney that explicitly addresses digital assets will govern access.
3. The platform’s terms of service come last. If you’ve done nothing (have not used the platform’s online legacy tools and have not addressed digital assets in your estate planning documents), the platform’s default rules apply — and those rules are almost never written with your family’s interests in mind.
This hierarchy matters enormously. A will that says “I leave all my assets to my spouse” likely does not give your spouse automatic access to your cryptocurrency exchange account or your PayPal funds. Without explicit language authorizing a fiduciary to access digital assets, and without the account credentials to do so practically, those assets can be lost entirely.
Cryptocurrency Is a Special Problem
Traditional financial accounts have institutions behind them. If your executor has the legal authority and the right paperwork, a bank will eventually cooperate. Cryptocurrency is different — it’s decentralized by design. If your family doesn’t have your private keys or seed phrases, the assets are mathematically inaccessible. No court order, no attorney letter, and no amount of persistence will unlock a crypto wallet without the correct credentials.
This means the practical side of digital asset planning is just as important as the legal side. Your estate plan should include a secure, regularly updated inventory of your digital accounts, access credentials, and — for cryptocurrency — wallet addresses and recovery phrases. This document needs to be stored somewhere your executor can find it without being so accessible that it creates a security risk during your lifetime. A fireproof safe, a safety deposit box, or a secure password manager with shared emergency access are common solutions.
Don’t Forget Non-Financial Digital Assets
Not everything online has a dollar figure attached, but that doesn’t make it worthless. Family photos stored only in iCloud, a decade of emails, a blog, a YouTube channel with a loyal audience, or a business social media account can all have real sentimental or commercial value. Idaho’s law covers these assets too, though accessing the content of private communications (like emails) requires more explicit authorization than simply managing an account.
What You Should Do
A complete digital asset plan has three components: the legal documents, the practical access information, and a designated person who understands what they’re being asked to manage. An updated will or revocable living trust should explicitly authorize your fiduciary to access, manage, transfer, or terminate digital accounts. Your power of attorney should do the same for incapacity planning.
If it’s been more than a year or two since you reviewed your estate plan — or if you’ve never addressed digital assets at all — now is a good time to have that conversation.
The law is slowly catching up to the digital world. The question is whether your estate plan has too.
My law firm is currently offering free telephonic, electronic, or in-person consultations concerning probating estates or creating estate planning documents.
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Robert J. Green is an Elder Law, Trust, Estate, & Guardianship Attorney and the owner of Kootenai Law Group, PLLC in Coeur d’Alene. If you have questions about estate planning, probates, wills, trusts, powers of attorney, guardianships, Medicaid planning, or VA Benefit planning, contact Kootenai Law at 208-765-6555, [email protected], or visit www.KootenaiLaw.com.
This has been presented as general information and not as legal advice. Do not engage in legal decision-making without the advice of a competent attorney after discussion of your specific circumstances.