The Rise of Digital Estate Planning: What Illinois Residents Should Know in 2026
Estate planning has expanded far beyond paper documents and physical assets in the digital age. Many assets including photos, cryptocurrency, social media accounts, and even different forms of business operation exist only in digital form. Given this recent shift, many traditional estate plans don’t address what happens to these assets, or how your family can legally access them, after death or incapacity.
What Are Digital Assets?
Digital assets encompass anything that can be stored, managed, or created electronically:
- Email accounts
- Social media accounts
- Cloud-stored photos and videos
- Password managers
- Domain names, websites, and digital business records
For many business owners, key digital assets include customer records, online sales platforms, cloud-hosted financial systems, and domain names. Access to these often determines whether a business can continue to operate smoothly.
How Illinois Law Regulates Digital Assets
In Illinois, digital estate planning is governed by the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which provides a specific legal framework for accessing digital property. Under RUFADAA, fiduciaries (executors, trustees, and agents acting under power of attorney) don’t automatically have access to the decedent or incapacitated person’s digital accounts. Federal privacy laws prohibit unauthorized access, regardless of whether the person trying to gain access is a close family member.
The RUFADAA establishes a hierarchy of authority that governs who has access to digital assets:
- Online tools provided by the platform. Examples of this include Apple’s Legacy Contact or Google’s Inactive Account Manager, which allow users to designate how their accounts and data should be handled in the event of death or prolonged inactivity.
- Estate planning documents. This includes wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. These legal documents control access if they contain express authorization that grants the fiduciary the right to manage, access, or obtain the digital records.
- Terms of service. This will govern if neither of the above apply. Terms of service often severely limit what information can be released.
Why This Matters in Practice
Without proper planning, executors and trustees might be unable to access email accounts needed to locate bills and financial records, manage cryptocurrency, or retrieve photos or documents stored in the cloud in the event of death or incapacity. This can create estate delays and unnecessary administrative costs.
In Illinois, a compliant digital estate plan will have explicit digital-asset provisions in wills, trusts, and powers of attorney that authorize access and record retrieval under RUFADAA. It’s also critical to coordinate with platform legacy tools, which can override estate planning documents if they’re not addressed carefully. Digital assets are now a core component of most estates, so ensuring legal compliance helps prevent access issues and provides clarity for fiduciaries.
How We Can Help
Levin Ginsburg offers personalized estate planning services tailored to address the increasing importance of digital assets. Our Wealth Management and Asset Protection group assists clients with incorporating digital accounts into their estate plans and ensuring fiduciaries have appropriate authority.
