Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: here is the part almost nobody knows — a setting inside the provider’s own website can override your will. Under the digital-assets act adopted across the states, a direction you give through an online tool beats a contrary direction in your will, trust or power of attorney. So the estate plan you paid for can be quietly outranked by a form you filled in once and forgot.
The hierarchy, quoted from the statute
Taking Florida’s enactment as the text (Fla. Stat. §740.003), the order is:
- 1. The provider’s online tool wins. “If the online tool allows the user to modify or delete a direction at all times, a direction regarding disclosure using an online tool overrides a contrary direction by the user in a will, trust, power of attorney, or other record.”
- 2. Otherwise your estate documents govern. “If a user has not used an online tool … or if the custodian has not provided an online tool, the user may allow or prohibit disclosure to a fiduciary … in a will, trust, power of attorney, or other record.”
- 3. Either of those beats the terms of service, where the terms were agreed without a separate, affirmative act.
The condition in limb 1 matters: the tool only outranks your will if it lets you change or delete the direction at any time. A one-off setting you cannot revisit does not get that priority.
The limit worth knowing before you rely on any of it
The act “does not give a fiduciary … any new or expanded rights other than those held by the user”, and access can still be cut back by federal law or by terms of service where you gave no direction (§740.004). Your executor inherits your access, not more than it.
What to actually do, in order
- Set the online tools first, because they rank highest. Google, for example, offers Inactive Account Manager, which in its own words “is a way for users to share parts of their account data or notify someone if they’ve been inactive for a certain period of time … to designate a third party, like immediate family members, to receive certain account data in the event of the user’s death or inactivity.” Other major providers have equivalents.
- Then say the same thing in your will or trust, for every account with no tool. Silence in both places is the default nobody wants.
- Make sure the two agree. If they conflict, the tool wins — so a stale setting silently defeats a current will.
- Leave a list of where accounts exist, updated, and stored separately from any password. An executor who does not know an account exists cannot ask for it.
- Never put credentials in the will itself. A will admitted to probate becomes a public court record.
We are not publishing a count of how many states have adopted this act: the national tracker did not serve verifiable data to us, and a number we cannot check is worth less than the rule itself, which is quoted above from law actually in force.
The documents still have to exist
Online tools cover the accounts that offer them. Everything else — and the authority to act at all — comes from a will and a power of attorney. LawDepot builds a state-specific last will and testament, and its power of attorney form covers the half that works while you are alive.
LawDepot pays us a commission if you buy through this link — it costs you nothing extra. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Affiliate Disclosure.
Related: why crypto needs the opposite approach · what a power of attorney costs · what makes a will valid where you live.
Federal statutes and regulations read from uscode (Cornell LII) and the official eCFR; state law quoted from the enacting state’s own statute. General information, not legal advice. State law adds requirements this page does not enumerate, and it varies.
The two platform tools, as the platforms describe them. Apple’s Legacy Contact excludes iCloud Keychain, so it hands over data but never passwords — what it covers and what it does not. Google lets you name up to ten people, and closing an account first permanently forfeits its contents — Inactive Account Manager.