Imagine your family knowing you have important information, photos, and money tied up in online accounts, but having no clear way to get in after you are gone. A spouse might know you used a payment app for side work or that you stored years of photos in the cloud, yet every login they try fails and every support email says they are not authorized. That feeling of being locked out, while bills and probate tasks pile up, is what many families now face.
For many Minnesotans, a growing share of life now lives online. Bank and investment statements are paperless, small businesses run through websites and payment apps, and nearly every family keeps photos, videos, and messages in digital form. If your estate plan only mentions your home, bank accounts, and retirement plans, there is a good chance that a large part of your real day to day life is missing from the plan.
At Guttman Law, we focus exclusively on estate planning, estate administration, and probate for clients in Minnesota, so we see how digital accounts can either support a smooth transition or create extra stress during an already difficult time. We work with clients to bring their digital lives into the conversation, then build estate plans that are strategic and adaptable as technology and platforms change. In this guide, we share how you can protect your digital assets and give your loved ones the authority, and the practical tools, they will need.
What Counts As Digital Assets In Your Estate Plan
Many people hear the phrase “digital assets” and think only of cryptocurrency or NFTs. In reality, most clients we meet in Minnesota already own a long list of digital assets, even if they have never used those terms. Digital assets include any information or value that exists primarily in electronic form and is tied to an account, device, or service, rather than a physical document or object.
For financial life, this usually starts with online banking and investment portals, retirement account dashboards, and payment apps such as Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App. Some clients also have balances in app based wallets or online savings platforms that they only access through a website or smartphone. For others, digital value may sit in store credits, rewards accounts, or travel points that are entirely online and easy to forget when listing assets.
Personal and family assets are just as important. Email accounts can hold years of communication, alongside receipts, contracts, and important records. Cloud storage services, such as iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, or photo libraries tied to a phone, often contain irreplaceable family photos and videos. Social media accounts preserve connections, messages, and content, and some people run side businesses through platforms like Etsy, Shopify, or monetized YouTube or TikTok accounts that generate real income.
Digital assets often mix financial and emotional value. A single Apple account, for example, might hold both a payment method for recurring subscriptions and thousands of pictures of a child growing up. Because of this, we routinely walk clients through a digital asset checklist in our estate planning meetings so they can see, often for the first time, how much of their life exists only in accounts and devices. That inventory becomes the foundation for deciding what needs to be protected and who should be able to manage it.
Why Digital Assets Create Unique Challenges For Minnesota Families
Traditional estate plans assumed that if someone knew where your file cabinet and safe deposit box were, they could find what they needed. Digital assets break that assumption. Your personal representative may know that you banked online, but if they do not have legal authority and a practical path to access those accounts, they can face long delays, repeated rejections from providers, and in some cases permanent loss of value.
Families often discover online only accounts during estate administration, for example when a subscription charge appears on a bank statement or a bill arrives for a service that has no paper trail. Without prior planning, a personal representative might spend weeks or months emailing support, submitting documents, and waiting for responses, only to be told that company policy will not allow access or that data has already been deleted. The same pattern can occur with email accounts, which may hold essential information to locate other assets, but which providers are reluctant to open for privacy reasons.
On the legal side, many digital assets are governed by detailed terms of service that treat your account as a personal license, not property that automatically passes to heirs. Privacy laws restrict what providers can share without specific, documented authority. Even if a Minnesota probate court appoints a personal representative, a provider may insist on seeing language in the will or other documents that clearly authorizes access to the type of data requested. The gap between having a right to manage an estate and being able to satisfy a provider’s internal policies is where many delays occur.
From our work in Minnesota estate administration and probate, we see how this plays out in real files. An otherwise careful plan may transfer real estate and bank accounts smoothly, yet stall because the person in charge cannot access an online merchant account that holds business income. Or a family may assume they will be able to retrieve photos from a deceased loved one’s phone, only to learn that both the device and the connected cloud account are locked, with no recovery information available. These experiences are frustrating and often avoidable when digital assets are addressed in the plan from the start.
How Minnesota Estate Planning Documents Can Address Digital Assets
The good news is that the same core estate planning tools you use for other assets can also protect your digital assets, if they are structured thoughtfully. A will, a revocable living trust, and Powers of attorney can each grant authority over digital property, and together they can give the people you choose both legal footing and clear instructions.
Your will typically names a personal representative, sometimes called an executor, who is responsible for collecting and managing assets in your probate estate. With the right language, your will can grant that person authority to access, manage, and close your digital accounts as needed to administer your estate. Generic phrasing may not address the full range of digital assets, so careful drafting is important, especially when accounts hold sensitive communications or financial information that providers are careful about releasing.
A revocable living trust can also play a central role. When digital assets are owned in the name of your trust, or when the trust is clearly authorized to control them, your successor trustee can step in to manage those assets under the trust terms. This can be especially useful for online financial accounts and digital businesses, where continuity matters and it is helpful to avoid probate. A trust structure can provide instructions about whether to keep, transfer, or wind down particular online activities, rather than leaving those decisions entirely to a future trustee.
Powers of attorney address incapacity, which is often where digital access problems first appear. A financial power of attorney can give an agent authority to access and manage digital financial accounts and records while you are alive but unable to act. Without that authority, a loved one trying to pay your bills or manage your subscriptions might face the same roadblocks a personal representative faces after death. In our planning work at Guttman Law, we build these digital considerations into the documents we prepare, then revisit them during complimentary periodic reviews so language remains aligned with current practices and the client’s evolving digital life.
Choosing The Right People To Manage Your Digital Assets
Not everyone who is a good choice to handle traditional estate tasks is also the best choice to navigate online systems and digital records. When we talk with Minnesota clients about their digital assets, we encourage them to think specifically about who has the temperament and skills to manage those assets responsibly and efficiently.
The person you select should be comfortable with technology at the level your assets require. For common online banking and email accounts, that may simply mean someone who uses a computer and smartphone regularly and is patient with forms and support processes. For more complex situations, such as cryptocurrency holdings, online businesses, or monetized content accounts, you may want someone who understands those platforms and the security measures involved, or who is willing to work with people who do.
It is also worth thinking about how this person will communicate with other family members. They may need to explain why certain accounts are closed, why some content is preserved and other content is deleted, or why it takes time to receive responses from providers. A person who is organized, transparent, and willing to follow your instructions carefully can reduce the risk of misunderstandings or conflict at a time when emotions are already high.
In some plans, the same person serves as personal representative, trustee, and agent under a power of attorney. In others, it makes sense to give different roles to different people, or to name a primary person and a backup who has stronger digital skills. At Guttman Law, we encourage clients, if they wish, to bring the people they are considering for these roles into planning meetings. That way, everyone has a chance to hear how digital assets will be handled and to ask questions before they are responsible for carrying out the plan.
Creating A Secure Inventory Of Your Digital Assets
Even the best drafted documents cannot help if the people you name do not know what digital assets you have or where to start. A secure, reasonably complete inventory is one of the most practical tools you can create for your future personal representative, trustee, or agent. It does not need to list every password in one place, but it should point a responsible person toward what exists and how to find it.
At a minimum, your inventory should identify each significant digital asset or account, where it is held, and what type of value it contains. For example, you might note that you have checking and savings accounts at a particular bank accessed through an online portal, payment app balances used for freelance income, or store credits attached to certain retailers. For personal accounts, you might list major email addresses, cloud storage services, and social media profiles, along with a brief note about how you use them and whether you want content preserved or deleted.
Security matters, so the inventory and any access information should be stored in a way that balances protection with eventual accessibility. Some clients use a password manager that offers an emergency access or legacy feature, where a trusted person can gain access under defined circumstances. Others keep a written or printed list in a secure location, such as a home safe, with instructions that are referenced in their estate planning documents. The right approach depends on your comfort with technology and the sensitivity of the accounts involved.
The most effective inventories are living documents. People add new accounts, change email providers, open new apps, and adopt new services over time. We often suggest that clients review their digital asset inventory at the same time each year that they gather information for taxes or financial checkups, and we routinely revisit these inventories in our complimentary periodic review meetings. That structure helps keep your plan, and your inventory, aligned with your real digital footprint instead of freezing it at one point in time.
Using Online Tools Together With Your Estate Plan
Alongside your legal documents, many major providers now offer built in tools to manage what happens to accounts if you die or stop using them. These tools can be powerful when they support your broader estate plan, but they can also create confusion if they conflict with your instructions or if no one knows they exist.
Some email and cloud providers allow you to name a trusted contact who can receive data or manage parts of an account if it becomes inactive for a certain period. Social media platforms may let you decide whether your profile is deleted, memorialized, or managed by a chosen person. App based financial services sometimes offer options for designating beneficiaries or setting rules for what happens if an account goes dormant after a period of no activity.
It helps to think of these tools as part of the same system as your will, trust, and powers of attorney, rather than separate or competing pieces. If you tell a platform to delete everything upon inactivity, but your estate plan expresses a wish to preserve certain photos or records, your family may not be able to carry out the plan you expected. If you designate a different person in platform settings than in your legal documents, providers and fiduciaries may receive mixed signals at an already stressful time.
In our planning and review meetings at Guttman Law, we often ask clients which online tools they already use and how those are configured. Together, we can look for obvious conflicts and talk through how those settings can reinforce, rather than undermine, the Minnesota estate plan. Sometimes small adjustments to platform settings, combined with updated documents, are enough to bring everything into alignment so your wishes are clear across both legal and online systems.
Keeping Your Digital Asset Plan Up To Date
One of the biggest differences between traditional and digital assets is how quickly they change. You might keep the same home for decades, but change phones, apps, and online services every few years. A plan that works well at the time you sign it can become incomplete if it is never revisited, especially where digital assets are concerned.
We encourage clients to think of digital asset planning as an ongoing process, not a one time project. That does not mean rewriting your entire estate plan every year. It often means updating your digital asset inventory, cleaning up old accounts you no longer use, and noting any new platforms that now hold meaningful value or information. Tying those reviews to regular events, such as preparing taxes or reviewing insurance, can make it feel manageable rather than overwhelming.
From a document perspective, major life events, such as marriage, divorce, a significant move, a new business, or major changes in your online activities, are times to consider whether your estate plan should be updated. At Guttman Law, we offer complimentary periodic review meetings so clients can sit down with us and walk through what has changed, including changes in their digital lives. That review often uncovers new accounts, new devices, or new online businesses that should be folded into the plan.
We also do not charge for phone consultations related to existing estate plans, which removes a common barrier to asking about smaller changes. If you start using a new investment app, purchase cryptocurrency, or begin earning income through an online platform, a brief call can help you understand how that fits into your plan. That ongoing communication helps keep your digital asset planning accurate and effective as technology and your own habits evolve.
Protect Your Digital Assets With A Thoughtful Minnesota Estate Plan
Digital assets are no longer an extra category that only applies to tech savvy investors. For many people in Minnesota, they are woven into everyday life, from online paychecks and automatic bill payments to photo libraries and social media. When those assets are left out of an estate plan, families can face financial loss, emotional hardship, and unnecessary delays. When they are included thoughtfully, your digital life can support a smoother, more complete transfer of both wealth and memories.
A comprehensive estate plan should help your loved ones find what they need, prove they have legal authority, and understand what you would want done with each part of your digital life. At Guttman Law, we design estate plans that reflect each client’s real mix of traditional and digital assets, and we build in education and periodic reviews so those plans can adapt over time. If you are unsure whether your current plan covers your digital assets, or you are creating a plan for the first time, we invite you to schedule a complimentary consultation to talk through your situation and next steps.