Including Digital Assets in Your Brooklyn Estate Plan

Your life is online — photos, email, social media, crypto, loyalty points, business accounts, and subscriptions. When you pass, all of it still exists, but your family may have no legal right to touch it. Brooklyn estate plans routinely ignore digital assets, and the result is locked accounts, lost cryptocurrency, and grieving relatives stuck behind passwords. Here are the mistakes to avoid.

Mistake 1: Assuming your family can just log in

Logging into someone else’s account, even your late parent’s, can violate the provider’s terms of service and federal computer access laws. New York has adopted a version of the digital assets access law that lets a fiduciary — your executor, trustee, or agent — manage your digital assets, but only if your planning documents grant that authority. Without it, your family may face a wall.

Mistake 2: Not granting authority in your documents

Your will, trust, and power of attorney should each include language authorizing your fiduciary to access, manage, and close digital accounts. New York’s statutory power of attorney under General Obligations Law §5-1513 can be tailored to cover digital assets while you’re alive but incapacitated. Generic forms drafted before digital life mattered often say nothing — leaving your agent powerless when you can’t act for yourself.

Mistake 3: Using online tools but ignoring the document hierarchy

Many platforms now offer their own settings — a legacy contact, an inactive account manager, or a beneficiary designation for the account. Under the access law, these provider tools generally control over your will if you use them. So a Brooklyn resident’s will can say one thing while a platform’s legacy setting says another, and the platform setting wins. Coordinate the two so they don’t contradict.

Mistake 4: Storing crypto with no access plan

Cryptocurrency and digital wallets are the cruelest example. If only you hold the private keys or seed phrase, and you never leave instructions, the assets are simply gone — no court can recover them. At the same time, you should never paste keys into your will, which becomes a public record when filed in Kings County Surrogate’s Court. Use a secure method to store access information and reference its location in your plan.

Mistake 5: Forgetting the value behind the accounts

Digital assets aren’t just sentimental. Crypto, an online business, monetized social accounts, domain names, and even certain points programs have real value that counts toward your New York taxable estate. With the 2026 exclusion at $7,350,000 and a cliff at $7,717,500, overlooked digital wealth can affect the broader plan. Inventory it like any other asset.

Mistake 6: Leaving no inventory at all

Your fiduciary can’t manage what they can’t find. Keep a current list of important accounts and where access information is stored — not the passwords themselves in a plain document, but a roadmap to a secure vault or password manager. Update it as you open and close accounts. A list from five years ago is nearly as useless as no list.

Mistake 7: Ignoring privacy you actually want

Access works both ways. Maybe you want your executor to retrieve family photos but never read your private messages. The access law lets you set limits, but only if you express them. Decide what your fiduciary should and shouldn’t see, and put those instructions in your documents.

A note before you decide

Digital assets are now a core part of what you leave behind, and New York law gives you tools to pass them on — if your documents are written to use them. Before you assume your online life will sort itself out, consult a New York estate planning attorney who can build digital asset authority into your will, trust, and power of attorney.