While Louisiana law has yet to account for the diversity of digital holdings, you still have options to protect your digital estate after death.
The Digital Estate
You do not need to be a prolific cryptocurrency investor or website manager to have a digital estate: a Facebook profile, Instagram account, or iCloud album could all be considered digital assets.
Your digital estate could include:
- A cryptocurrency investment account
- Online bank accounts such as a PayPal profile or TransferWise balance
- Social media accounts
- A personal blog, digital journal, or virtual chat history
- Photographs stored in a cloud server or encrypted drive
While most people do not have financially valuable digital estates, they may still want their family members to take control of their virtual assets once they have passed away.
Digital Estate Planning in Louisiana
Across the country, legislators have passed new laws to make digital estate planning easier than ever. However, Louisiana remains one of a very few states that has no digital estate planning infrastructure. This means, any Louisiana resident who wants to protect their virtual assets must do so within the confines of a framework that was not necessarily made for the realities of the Internet Age.
Digital estate planners usually advise clients to consider their options under the following models:
- The Inventory Model. People who own few digital assets or do not want to transfer the entirety of their digital estate upon death, could simply create an “inventory” of their digital estate by listing out their different account usernames, passwords, and other pertinent log-in information. The inventoried information could be affixed to a traditional will or written as a separate “digital will.” You should always speak to an estate planning attorney before creating or combining wills, as the user “terms of service” for certain accounts may preclude intergenerational transfers. Ideally, your inventory should be stored in a safe, secure location that will still be easily accessible by your heirs after you pass away.
- The Trust Model. Digital assets that are transferrable or financially valuable could be bundled into a revocable living trust. You could, for instance, transfer the contents or key to a cryptocurrency wallet into a trust. The trust could then manage, re-invest, or disburse the proceeds upon your death.
Depending on how you want to organize your digital estate, you may have to nominate a “digital executor” who will be responsible for handling your assets after your death and transferring control of any accounts to the intended heir or beneficiaries. While most people name a trusted friend or family member as their digital executor, doing so carries some risks. If you want to spare your loved ones the inconvenience or embarrassment of combing through your private accounts, you could delegate the responsibility to a Louisiana estate planning attorney.
Why You Might Need a Digital Estate Plan
Since Louisiana law has yet to account for digital estates, an individual’s failure to include their virtual assets in a traditional estate plan could create unexpected problems.
While Louisiana succession courts have special processes to disburse the estates of people who did not have a will or trust, they may not be able to govern the transference of virtual assets that are governed by corporate “terms of service” agreements rather than probate laws and statutes.
If you have treasured family photographs, a funded PayPal account, or profitable cryptocurrency wallet, your loved ones could lose out on the memories, money, and convenience that come with a well-planned estate.
Speak to an Experienced Professional
Planning a digital estate is not always easy, especially when you have valuable virtual assets. However, you should still account for your digital estate in a traditional will or trust. A Louisiana succession planning attorney could help ensure that your digital assets are protected by law and compliant with individual companies’ terms of service agreements governing intergenerational account transfers and changes in custody.
What Counts as a Digital Asset in Your Louisiana Estate
The term “digital asset” covers a remarkably broad range of property, and most people significantly underestimate how much of their wealth and personal legacy now exists in digital form. At the most financially significant end of the spectrum are cryptocurrency and digital investment accounts — Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other tokens held in software wallets or on exchanges that may have substantial monetary value and that require specific technical access credentials to retrieve. Equally significant are online brokerage accounts, savings accounts accessed only through web portals, and business accounts tied to email addresses. These financial digital assets can represent a large portion of an estate’s value, and they are inaccessible without the account credentials and, in some cases, specific hardware authentication devices or seed phrases that only the account holder knows.
Beyond financial accounts, digital assets include email accounts that may contain important business communications, contracts, or correspondence needed to resolve the decedent’s affairs; social media profiles that the family may wish to memorialize or delete; cloud storage accounts containing family photos, personal documents, business files, and creative works; subscription services that may be generating ongoing charges; domain names and websites that have business or monetary value; and loyalty program accounts — frequent flyer miles, hotel points, credit card rewards — that may have significant transferable value. Each of these assets presents different access challenges, different platform policies about transfer or inheritance, and different legal questions about whether the digital account represents transferable property or merely a revocable license that terminates at death.
The distinction between digital property that is truly owned and a digital license that expires at death matters enormously for estate planning purposes. Most software, e-books, and digital media purchased from major platforms are licenses — the right to use the content — rather than ownership of the underlying content itself. When the account holder dies, these licenses typically cannot be transferred to heirs. The platform’s terms of service govern the transferability of the account and its contents, and most platforms prohibit transfer of the account itself even when the content has financial or sentimental value. Understanding which of your digital holdings represent transferable property and which represent non-transferable licenses is a critical first step in planning for the digital dimension of your estate.
How Louisiana Law Addresses Access to Digital Accounts After Death
Louisiana adopted a version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which establishes a framework for fiduciaries — executors, trustees, curators, and agents under powers of attorney — to access digital assets on behalf of the person they represent. Under this framework, access is governed by a hierarchy of authorization: the account holder’s explicit instructions in a designated online tool provided by the platform (such as Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s Legacy Contact) take precedence over all other instructions. If no platform-specific designation exists, the account holder’s instructions in a will, trust, power of attorney, or other written record control. If no written instructions exist, the platform’s terms of service govern — and most terms of service restrict access to account contents even by family members following death.
The practical implication of this legal framework is that a Louisiana executor has legal authority to access certain digital assets of the decedent — but that authority does not mean the platforms will cooperate without documentation. An executor seeking access to a deceased person’s email account, financial platform, or cryptocurrency exchange will typically need to provide a certified copy of the Letters Testamentary (the court document that authorizes the executor to act on behalf of the estate), a copy of the death certificate, and sometimes a specific court order if the platform requires it. Some platforms have established dedicated processes for estate administration — Google, Facebook, and Apple all have specific procedures — while others have no process at all and effectively make access impossible without the account credentials themselves.
Cryptocurrency presents a unique legal and practical challenge that Louisiana’s RUFADAA framework does not fully solve. Unlike accounts held at financial institutions or online platforms, cryptocurrency held in a self-custody wallet exists on the blockchain and is controlled entirely by the private key or seed phrase — the cryptographic password that authorizes transactions. There is no customer service department to call, no account recovery process, and no court order that can compel access. If the decedent did not leave the private key or seed phrase in a secure but accessible location, the cryptocurrency is effectively lost forever. Louisiana law can confirm that the cryptocurrency is part of the estate and belongs to the heirs — but it cannot create access that does not already exist. This is why cryptocurrency owners must take affirmative steps during their lifetime to ensure that their executor or trustee can actually reach these assets.
Building a Digital Estate Plan That Actually Works
An effective digital estate plan starts with a comprehensive inventory of all digital assets — financial accounts, cryptocurrency holdings, email and social media accounts, cloud storage, domain names, subscriptions, and loyalty programs — along with the access credentials, authentication methods, and platform-specific recovery information for each. This inventory is the most sensitive document in your estate plan because it contains the keys to your financial life, and it must be stored with corresponding care. A password manager with an emergency access feature, a sealed envelope stored with the original will, or a secure document service that provides access to designated persons upon death are all options. The inventory must be updated regularly — access credentials change, new accounts are opened, and old ones are closed.
The legal estate planning documents — will, trust, and power of attorney — should explicitly address digital assets. Louisiana estate planning documents should include a grant of authority to the executor or trustee to access, manage, and distribute digital assets; instructions about which assets should be transferred to heirs, which should be memorialized, and which should be deleted; and authorization language that meets the RUFADAA requirements for fiduciary access without requiring a court order for each platform. Some estate planning attorneys include a separate digital asset memorandum that travels with the will and provides the specific instructions for each platform without embedding sensitive credential information in a court-filed document. The specific structure depends on the type and extent of the digital assets involved and the level of privacy the testator requires.
Platform-specific legacy planning tools are an underutilized resource that can dramatically simplify digital estate administration. Google’s Inactive Account Manager allows you to designate a trusted contact who receives access to specified Google products after a defined period of inactivity. Facebook’s Legacy Contact can manage your memorial account. Apple’s Digital Legacy program allows a designated legacy contact to request access to your iCloud account after death with a special access key. These tools operate independently of the succession process and can allow the designated person to retrieve data, manage the account, or close it according to the decedent’s prior instructions without waiting for Letters Testamentary or court orders. Setting up these platform-specific designations during your lifetime is one of the most practical and immediately effective steps in digital estate planning — and it takes only minutes to complete for each platform.
If you need help planning your digital estate, do not take your chances with a court system that was not designed to accommodate virtual assets. Contact Scott Law Group – Estate Counsel online today to get started on your case.