RUFADAA and digital assets: what happens to your online accounts when you die (US)
2 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
Almost every US state has adopted some version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, RUFADAA for short, a law written specifically to answer one question: who can access a dead person's online accounts, and how.
The priority order
RUFADAA sets a strict hierarchy. First, whatever the platform's own built-in tool says, Google's Inactive Account Manager, Apple's Legacy Contact, Facebook's legacy contact, if you set one up, that instruction wins over everything else. Second, if no platform tool was used, your will or power of attorney can grant a fiduciary explicit authority. Third, and only as a fallback, the platform's own terms of service decide, which for most major platforms means nobody gets in without a court order.
Why this catches families off guard
An executor with full legal authority over a physical estate, letters testamentary, a certified death certificate, everything, can still be refused access to an email account or a photo library, because RUFADAA gives platforms broad discretion to withhold content, especially private messages, even from a legally appointed fiduciary. The law protects privacy first, access is the exception, not the default.
What RUFADAA actually gets you
At most, a right to request a catalogue of what accounts exist, or in some cases the ability to close or memorialize an account, not necessarily to read its contents. Getting the contents themselves, photos, documents, financial records, usually still depends on having set up the platform's own legacy tool in advance, or on the account holder having left login information somewhere accessible.
What actually works
Sharing passwords outright creates its own legal exposure, most platforms' terms explicitly prohibit it, and using someone else's login can brush up against computer fraud statutes never written with grieving families in mind. What works within the law is using each platform's own legacy tool where one exists, and leaving a list, not passwords, of every account, so whoever is handling your estate knows what to ask for and from whom.
RUFADAA exists because lawmakers recognized this gap. It doesn't close it by itself, it just gives your executor somewhere to stand once they know what they're looking for.
Leave your family a map, not a mystery.
Inherit Vault is a digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.
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