Your Cyber Legacy: Planning for Digital Assets in Your Estate

For over 125 years, Rountree Losee, LLP has helped families in Southeastern North Carolina plan for the future and protect what matters most. While the fundamentals of thoughtful estate planning remain constant, the assets we help clients protect have evolved dramatically. Today, your legacy extends far beyond traditional property and financial accounts—it includes a digital footprint that requires careful attention and planning.

Digital assets represent a category of commonly overlooked items that play an increasingly crucial role in estate plans. If you created your will or trust without considering these assets, you’re not alone. Many clients in Wilmington and throughout coastal North Carolina have found themselves in the same position. The good news is that this oversight is easy to correct with proper guidance.

Understanding Your Digital Assets

Digital assets encompass a wide range of online property and accounts. Your digital estate likely includes digital photos and videos saved on your phone, in the cloud, or on external hard drives. You may have important files—emails, financial documents, or business records—stored in cloud services or on computer hard drives. For business owners along the North Carolina coast, digital business records and client databases often represent critical operational assets.

The scope extends to cryptocurrency holdings, nonfungible tokens, and domain names that may carry substantial value. Your social media presence on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram forms part of your digital legacy, as do content creation accounts on YouTube or affiliate marketing relationships with companies like Amazon. For entrepreneurs running e-commerce operations through Shopify or Etsy, these digital business platforms may represent significant income streams that require protection and proper succession planning.

The Real-World Value of Digital Assets

These digital holdings often carry significant real-world value. Cryptocurrency wallets, monetized social media accounts, and established domain names can represent meaningful portions of your estate—sometimes even among its most valuable components. For business owners in New Hanover County and surrounding areas, digital platforms and client databases may constitute the heart of ongoing business operations.

Whether or not you take action now, your legacy already includes more than monetary inheritance, family heirlooms, and personal property. In today’s interconnected world, your digital assets form an integral part of what you’ll pass to the next generation. The attorneys at Rountree Losee understand the importance of addressing this modern dimension of estate planning with the same care and attention our firm has brought to traditional estate matters since 1896.

Three Essential Steps for Digital Asset Planning

Creating a Comprehensive Inventory

The foundation of any sound digital asset plan begins with a thorough inventory. Document every online account you maintain, from banking and investment platforms to social media profiles. Business owners should pay particular attention to spreadsheets, digital records, client files, databases, and other digital business documents. This information proves invaluable not only for estate planning purposes but also for any business succession plan you develop.

Your inventory creates a critical roadmap for the individuals you trust to step in and manage your affairs—whether that’s your agent under a financial power of attorney, your executor or personal representative, or your successor trustee. Without this documentation, your trusted decision-makers may struggle to locate and access important assets or business information when you need them most.

Appointing a Digital Fiduciary

North Carolina law, like most states, has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), which governs how fiduciaries can access digital assets. This legislation provides a framework, but you still need to designate someone you trust to access your online accounts and digital business assets on your behalf if you become incapacitated or after your death.

In most situations, this person will also serve in a traditional fiduciary capacity—as your agent under a power of attorney, trustee, or personal representative. The timing of when they need access will determine which role they fill. Your digital fiduciary should keep access information secure while taking advantage of online tools offered by major providers. Services like Google Inactive Account Manager or Apple Digital Legacy can help ensure your fiduciary can act quickly and within the bounds of each platform’s terms and conditions.

Implementing the Right Legal Tools

Your unique circumstances will dictate which legal instruments best serve your digital asset planning needs. For some clients in our Wilmington office, funding certain digital assets into a trust provides the most effective protection. Others benefit from including specific digital access provisions in their power of attorney documents. The attorneys at Rountree Losee can help you evaluate your situation and determine the most appropriate approach.

We work with you to identify the right tools for protecting and transferring your digital assets, select trusted decision-makers and beneficiaries, and ensure accessibility when it matters most. Because laws governing digital assets continue to evolve, any planning you completed in the past deserves a fresh review to confirm it still serves your needs under current North Carolina law.

The Cost of Inaction

Failing to plan for your digital assets creates unnecessary risks for your family and business. Without proper planning, you could lose irreplaceable digital family photo albums or face serious business disruption if you become incapacitated. For business owners who have built their enterprises in coastal North Carolina communities, the consequences of inadequate digital asset planning can extend beyond personal loss to threaten the livelihoods of employees and the continuity of client relationships.

How Rountree Losee Can Help

If the process of inventorying and planning for your digital assets feels overwhelming, the attorneys at Rountree Losee are here to help. We provide counsel on estate planning, estate administration, and trust administration throughout North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Our approach combines the personalized attention you’d expect from a trusted local firm with the sophisticated legal knowledge developed over more than a century of practice.

During Estate Planning Awareness Week and throughout the year, we encourage families and business owners in Southeastern North Carolina to review their estate plans and address any gaps in their digital asset planning. We can help you identify, document, and protect these modern assets while preserving the peace of mind that comes from knowing your complete legacy is secure.
To discuss your digital asset planning needs or schedule a comprehensive estate plan review, contact Rountree Losee, LLP. Our firm has served the Wilmington community and surrounding areas since 1896, and we remain committed to helping clients navigate both timeless estate planning principles and emerging challenges in our digital age.