An executor called me from his late father’s apartment in Manhattan. He was trying to piece together his father’s financial life and kept hitting a wall with one particular app on his phone—Cash App. His father used it for everything from sending birthday money to his grandkids to buying fractional shares of stock. The son could see the app, but he couldn’t access the account, the transaction history, or the funds within. He was the legal executor of the estate, yet a simple app was holding a piece of his father’s legacy hostage.
This is a scene we see play out with increasing frequency. These platforms are not just messaging services with a payment feature. They are financial accounts. The balance in a Cash App, Venmo, or PayPal account is an asset of the estate, just like a bank account or a brokerage statement. As an executor, you have a fiduciary duty to gather—or “marshal”—all of the decedent’s assets. Ignoring these digital accounts is not an option.
The Executor’s Dilemma: Terms of Service vs. Fiduciary Duty
The core problem for the son in Manhattan—and for countless executors across New York—is a conflict between their legal duty and the platform’s rules. When your father signed up for Cash App, he agreed to a long Terms of Service document. That agreement is a contract, and it almost certainly prohibits sharing passwords or allowing another person to access the account. Attempting to log in, even with the correct credentials, could be a technical breach of that contract.
Beyond the company’s terms, federal privacy laws like the Stored Communications Act were written long before these apps existed, and they generally restrict a provider’s ability to disclose a user’s private data. This creates a significant legal hurdle for an executor. The platform isn’t trying to be difficult—it’s trying to comply with the law and protect user privacy, even after death.
Without a court order or a clear legal framework, the company’s default position is often to deny access. This leaves an executor in a bind, potentially forced to petition the Surrogate’s Court for authority, a process that costs the estate both time and money.
New York’s Answer: Planning for Digital Assets
New York law is catching up. The state adopted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, found in Article 13-A of the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL). This statute creates a three-tiered system for determining who can access digital assets after the owner’s death.
The first and most powerful tier is any instruction you leave directly with the platform itself. Some online services now have tools that let you name a “legacy contact” or designate what should happen to your account when you die. If you’ve used such a tool, your wishes there will generally control.
If you haven’t—and most people haven’t—the second tier is your estate plan. Your will, trust, or power of attorney can give your fiduciary—your executor or trustee—the explicit authority to access, manage, and distribute your digital assets. This is the most critical part of modern estate planning. A simple clause granting this power can transform the process from a months-long court battle into a straightforward administrative task.
If you have neither a legacy contact nor a will that addresses digital assets, the third tier applies: the platform’s Terms of Service. As we’ve seen, those terms usually default to privacy and deny access, putting your executor right back where they started.
Stewardship in a Digital World
Thinking about these accounts is an essential act of stewardship. Your digital life is part of your legacy. It contains financial assets, personal communications, and irreplaceable photos. Leaving your family without a map to this world is like leaving them a locked safe without a combination. They know something of value is inside, but they have no way to get to it.
Being a prudent steward of your legacy means being deliberate. It requires creating an inventory of your important digital accounts—not the passwords, but a list for your executor. It also requires ensuring your will contains the specific language under New York law to grant your fiduciaries the authority they need.
This isn’t about technology. It’s about family. It’s about making a difficult time just a little bit easier for the people you leave behind. A well-drafted plan ensures that your chosen executor can efficiently settle your affairs, whether that means closing an old social media profile or transferring a balance from a payment app to your beneficiaries.
A prudent first step is to inventory your significant digital accounts. Once you have that list, our firm can conduct a review of your existing will or trust to determine if it contains the necessary provisions for your executor to manage them under EPTL Article 13-A.
