Estate Planning Insights: Managing Digital Assets

Granting Access to Digital Assets is an Important Step in the Estate Planning Process

In 2025, nearly every New Yorker owns Digital Assets. As technology advances and Digital Assets become more common and valuable, planning properly for the management and distribution of Digital Assets after death becomes a vital piece of the estate planning process.

New York law defines a Digital Asset as “an electronic record in which an individual has a right or interest. The term does not include an underlying asset or liability unless the asset or liability is itself an electronic record.”¹ Common Digital Assets include digital accounts (e.g. social media accounts), digital files (e.g. manuscripts and other writings), electronic communications (e.g. emails and texts), music and digital photos. However, underlying assets, such as funds in a bank account accessible by an online account or application, are not considered Digital Assets.

It is easy to think that the Executor of your estate could access your Digital Assets just as you do, but that is not the case. Many service providers restrict access to Digital Assets to only the account holder and do not extend access to a user’s Executor after death. Accessing another person’s digital accounts, even as the Executor of his or her estate, may constitute a criminal action under privacy laws.

Because ownership of Digital Assets is common, the New York State legislature introduced EPTL Article 13-A, which grants an Executor the authority to access certain information about another person’s Digital Assets. The user/owner can expand such powers to grant a fiduciary full access to his or her Digital Assets, including access to the content of digital communications, which are not otherwise available to the fiduciary.

At times, access to a decedent’s digital communications (email or text messages) may be important to continue the operations of a business, communicate with or identify family members or associates, to understand the decedent’s state of mind or activities near end of life, or simply to review, collect and delete such communications. Without explicit authority to access digital communications, the Executor will only have access to a catalogue of digital communications ― not the content of the communications themselves ― and may not be able to determine vital information. The catalogue will generally only contain information about the sender, time of transmission, and recipient, and content of messages will be unavailable.

Therefore, it is important to grant your Executor the right to access and manage Digital Assets within your Will. Powers can be expansive or restrictive to ensure that your Digital Assets are managed consistent with your intent.

Additional Assistance

For more information, please contact any member of our Trusts and Estates Team, or the Phillips Lytle attorney with whom you have a relationship.