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Indiana adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) in 2016 under IC § 32-39-3, giving fiduciaries—executors, trustees, agents under power of attorney, and guardians—a legal framework for accessing and managing digital assets after incapacity or death. Digital assets include email accounts, social media profiles, cloud-stored files, cryptocurrency wallets, online business accounts, domain names, digital photographs, and any other electronically stored information with economic or sentimental value. Without explicit planning, most of these assets are inaccessible to your family and fiduciaries—locked behind terms of service agreements and platform policies that default to denial of access.
Why Digital Assets Require Specific Planning
Traditional estate planning instruments—wills, trusts, powers of attorney—were designed for tangible property and financial accounts. They work because there is a clear legal framework for transferring ownership: a deed for real estate, a beneficiary designation for insurance, a retitling for bank accounts. Digital assets operate differently. They are governed by terms of service agreements that you agreed to when you created the account, and those agreements typically prohibit sharing login credentials and restrict what happens to the account after death.
RUFADAA creates a hierarchy of authority for digital asset access: first, any instructions you provided through the platform’s own tool (like Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact); second, instructions in your estate planning documents (will, trust, or power of attorney); third, the platform’s terms of service. If you do nothing, the terms of service control—and most platforms default to either deleting the account or locking it permanently.
The Categories of Digital Assets You Need to Address
Financial Digital Assets
Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital currencies), online brokerage accounts, PayPal and Venmo balances, online banking, and digital payment platforms. These assets have clear monetary value and may represent a significant portion of your estate. Cryptocurrency presents a unique challenge: without the private key or seed phrase, the assets are permanently inaccessible. There is no bank to call, no customer service to petition. If the private key dies with you, the cryptocurrency is gone.
Business Digital Assets
Domain names, websites, online stores (Etsy, Amazon, Shopify), business social media accounts, advertising accounts (Google Ads, Meta), email lists, and SaaS subscriptions. For business owners, these assets may be critical to business continuity. An online business that loses access to its domain name, advertising accounts, or customer database can be effectively destroyed. Your business succession plan must address digital asset access alongside traditional business assets.
Personal Digital Assets
Email accounts, social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X), cloud storage (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox), streaming accounts, photo libraries, and digital subscriptions. While these may have limited monetary value, they often have significant sentimental value—family photos stored only in the cloud, correspondence that family members want to preserve, or social media profiles that survivors want to memorialize rather than delete.
How to Include Digital Assets in Your Indiana Estate Plan
- Create a digital asset inventory. List every significant digital account and asset: the platform or service, the username or account identifier, how it is accessed, its approximate value (monetary or sentimental), and what you want to happen to it. Store this inventory securely—not in your will (which becomes public at probate) but in a separate document referenced by your estate planning instruments.
- Designate a digital fiduciary. In your will, trust, or power of attorney, specifically name a person with the authority to access and manage your digital assets. RUFADAA requires that this authority be explicitly granted—general fiduciary language in a pre-2016 document may not be sufficient. The person you choose should be someone you trust with sensitive personal information and who has the technical competence to manage digital accounts.
- Use platform-specific tools. Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you designate someone to receive your data or delete your account after a period of inactivity. Facebook’s Legacy Contact feature lets you choose someone to manage your memorialized profile. Apple’s Digital Legacy program lets you designate contacts who can access your iCloud data after death. These platform tools take priority over your estate documents under RUFADAA, so configure them consistently with your overall plan.
- Secure your cryptocurrency. If you hold cryptocurrency, your private keys or seed phrases must be accessible to your fiduciary. Options include a hardware wallet stored in a safe deposit box with instructions, a secure password manager with access instructions in your digital asset inventory, or a crypto custody service that supports inheritance planning. Never store private keys only in your memory—that is the digital equivalent of burying cash in an unmarked location.
- Update your estate plan to reference digital assets. Your will, trust, and power of attorney should include specific language authorizing your fiduciary to access, manage, transfer, and terminate digital assets under RUFADAA. Generic language drafted before Indiana adopted RUFADAA in 2016 may not be sufficient. If your estate plan has not been updated since 2016, this is one of the reasons it should be.
What Happens When There Is No Plan
Without a digital estate plan, your family faces a painful reality: they know your digital life exists but cannot access it. Email accounts contain correspondence they may need for financial, legal, or personal reasons. Photo libraries contain irreplaceable memories. Business accounts contain revenue-generating assets. And they have no legal right to access any of it, because the platform’s terms of service—which you agreed to—do not recognize your family’s need for access.
RUFADAA provides a legal pathway, but it requires a court order or estate planning documentation that specifically authorizes access. Without that documentation, the platform will follow its own terms of service—which typically means denial, deletion, or memorialization with no content access.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I just leave my passwords in my will?
We advise against it. A will becomes a public document when it is filed with the probate court, which means your passwords would be part of the public record. Instead, reference a separate, securely stored digital asset inventory in your will, and keep the inventory itself in a password-protected file, a secure physical location (safe deposit box or home safe), or a password manager with access instructions provided to your fiduciary.
Does my power of attorney cover digital assets?
Only if it specifically authorizes access to digital assets. A power of attorney drafted before Indiana adopted RUFADAA in 2016 almost certainly does not include this language. Even a recently drafted power of attorney may not address digital assets if the attorney did not include RUFADAA-specific provisions. Review your power of attorney with your estate planning attorney to confirm.
What about my social media accounts after I die?
Each platform handles death differently. Facebook allows memorialization or deletion through a Legacy Contact. Instagram follows a similar process. X (formerly Twitter) allows deactivation by verified family members. LinkedIn allows removal upon request with proof of death. Google’s Inactive Account Manager can share data or delete the account. In every case, the process is faster and more complete when the account holder has configured the platform’s tools in advance.
Plan for Your Whole Life—Including Your Digital Life
Your digital assets are part of your estate, and they deserve the same attention as your bank accounts, your property, and your business interests. A comprehensive estate plan that ignores digital assets is incomplete—and the consequences of that gap fall on the people you are trying to protect.