RUFADAA: How US law handles your digital assets after death

When someone dies in the US, their family often discovers that banks, email providers, and social networks will not hand over account access — even with a death certificate. RUFADAA exists to solve this, but only if you plan correctly.

The three-tier consent priority

RUFADAA uses a priority system for whether a fiduciary can access an account:

• 1. Online tool — If the platform offers a legacy or inactivity setting (Google Inactive Account Manager, Apple Legacy Contact, Facebook Memorialization), that setting wins
• 2. Will or legal document — If there is no online tool, your will, trust, or power of attorney can grant access
• 3. Court order — If neither exists, the fiduciary may need a court order, and platforms can still refuse under their terms of service

Which states adopted RUFADAA

A large majority of US states have enacted RUFADAA or its predecessor UFADAA. The exact text varies slightly by state, so check your state's statute. The principle is consistent across most of them: consent is the key.

How to plan under RUFADAA

• Set up platform legacy tools — Google Inactive Account Manager and Apple Legacy Contact are free and take minutes
• Mention digital assets in your will — Explicitly authorize your executor to access your digital accounts
• Use an encrypted vault — Store passwords, 2FA recovery codes, crypto seed phrases, and instructions. Release them to your executor when you are gone
• Keep it updated — Passwords change and new accounts appear — review once a quarter

What RUFADAA does not cover

RUFADAA governs access, not ownership of crypto on a blockchain (where whoever holds the key owns the funds), and it does not force platforms to hand over content they consider private under their terms. For crypto specifically, the seed phrase is everything — there is no customer support to recover it.