What Happens to Your Digital Assets When You Die in Illinois?

Article Summary

What Are Digital Assets?

A digital asset is any electronic record in which you have a right or interest. Under Illinois law (755 ILCS 10/2), the definition is intentionally broad. It covers nearly everything you access with a username and password — and a great deal more.

The aggregate value of the average American's digital assets is often underestimated. A person with a modest brokerage account accessed online, a cryptocurrency wallet, an Apple ID with years of purchased apps and music, thousands of digital photos, and accumulated airline miles may have tens of thousands of dollars in digital holdings — much of it entirely invisible to a grieving family trying to settle an estate.

Illinois Law: The RUFADAA (755 ILCS 10)

Illinois adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) effective January 1, 2017, codified at 755 ILCS 10/1 et seq. Before this law, executors and trustees frequently had no legal basis to demand access to a deceased person's digital accounts — and platforms could (and did) refuse to provide it, citing their terms of service. The RUFADAA changed that, but only partially.

Under the RUFADAA, your executor or trustee has the right to access the catalog of digital assets — essentially the list of what exists — even without your express authorization. But accessing the content of electronic communications (emails, text messages, private messages) requires either your express authorization in your estate planning documents or a court order. This distinction matters enormously: your executor can learn that an email account exists, but may not be able to read the emails themselves unless you authorized it.

How to Grant Your Executor Access to Digital Assets in Illinois

The most reliable way to ensure your executor can manage your digital assets is to give them clear legal authority through your estate planning documents and a practical way to actually use that authority — meaning access to your credentials.

Digital Asset Types: What Happens to Each

Different digital assets follow very different rules at death. Understanding the specific challenges for each category helps you plan appropriately.

Cryptocurrency and NFTs

Cryptocurrency held in a self-custody wallet (where you control the private keys or seed phrase) is yours and yours alone. If your executor cannot find your seed phrase — the 12 or 24 word recovery phrase — the funds are gone permanently. The only planning that works is ensuring your seed phrase is securely documented and stored somewhere your executor will find it after your death.

Cryptocurrency held on a centralized exchange (Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, etc.) is somewhat more recoverable. These platforms maintain customer service departments and typically respond to properly documented estate claims — a death certificate, Letters of Office, and sometimes notarized documentation from your executor. However, the process is slow, inconsistent across platforms, and not guaranteed. Keeping a record of which exchanges hold your assets and how much makes the process infinitely easier for your estate.

NFTs and digital art present similar challenges. They are typically stored in a blockchain wallet you control or on a marketplace like OpenSea. Without access credentials or documented wallet information, they cannot be transferred. Their value at death must also be assessed for estate tax purposes — a particularly difficult task given the volatility of digital art markets.

Social Media and Email Accounts

Social media platforms each have their own policies for deceased users, and none of them automatically notify your family or transfer control upon death. Without advance planning, your accounts may simply remain active until the platform detects inactivity — or until a family member reports the death.

Email accounts deserve special attention because they often contain years of financial records, correspondence, and personal history — and because the RUFADAA treats email content with the highest level of privacy protection. To give your executor access to the content of your emails (not just the existence of the account), you need explicit authorization language in your will or trust. Without it, your executor may be able to learn your Gmail address exists but may be legally blocked from reading any messages.

Online Financial Accounts

Online bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and payment services present fewer access challenges than social media — but they present their own complications for estate administration.

A traditional bank or brokerage account that is accessed online is still a conventional financial account governed by standard probate and estate law. Your executor, with proper Letters of Office, can generally access and transfer these accounts through the normal probate process — or outside of probate if the account has a payable-on-death designation. The fact that the account exists only online does not change the underlying legal rules. What it changes is discoverability: if your executor does not know the account exists, it may simply never be claimed.

PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App balances are governed by each platform's terms of service. PayPal allows account holders to designate beneficiaries in some jurisdictions, and estates can generally claim remaining balances with proper documentation. Cash App and Venmo have their own estate claim processes. These are modest-value accounts for most people, but they are worth addressing in your digital asset inventory.

Digital Content and Subscriptions

One of the most misunderstood areas of digital assets is purchased digital content. When you buy a movie from iTunes, a song from Amazon Music, or an eBook from the Kindle store, you are typically purchasing a license to use the content — not ownership of it. These licenses are almost universally non-transferable and terminate at your death under the platform's terms of service.

This means the thousands of dollars you may have spent on digital movies, music, and books cannot be inherited. They do not pass under your will. They are not estate property in any meaningful sense — they simply expire. Illinois law does not override this, and it is an intentional feature of digital content licensing, not a gap that courts have been willing to fill.

The practical implication: if you have content you want to preserve for your family — family photos, creative writing, personal documents — store it in a format you own and control (local hard drives, external storage, physical media) rather than exclusively in cloud services governed by license agreements.

Practical Steps: Building a Digital Asset Plan in Illinois

A complete digital asset plan does not require technical expertise — it requires the same intentional, documented approach that good estate planning always demands. Here is how to get started.

Frequently Asked Questions

Next Steps

Digital assets are the fastest-growing and least-planned-for category in modern estate planning. The technology has evolved faster than most estate plans, and the consequences of that gap — permanently lost cryptocurrency, inaccessible family photos, accounts that live on indefinitely — are increasingly affecting Illinois families.

The good news is that the fix is straightforward: a comprehensive digital asset inventory, updated estate planning documents with the right language, and in-platform legacy designations on major accounts. None of these require a technical background — they require the same intentional attention that any other part of a good estate plan demands.

For broader context on how digital assets fit into a complete Illinois estate plan, see our guides on what a simple estate plan includes in Chicago, the advantages of a revocable living trust, and overlooked steps that make or break an Illinois estate plan.

Mary Liberty — Chicago Estate Planning Attorney

Mary Liberty is a Chicago-based estate planning and probate attorney dedicated to making legal planning accessible, affordable, and stress-free. Through her modern virtual law practice, she helps families and individuals across Illinois create clear, effective plans that protect their assets and their loved ones.

Mary focuses on estate planning, uncontested probate, and her signature partial probate service. Known for her precision, empathy, and plain-language guidance, she operates on a 100% flat-fee model so clients always know exactly what to expect.