Photos, email, crypto, and the accounts that run your life — what happens to them, and how Oregon law lets you decide. September 2026
Twenty years ago, an executor could settle an estate with a filing cabinet and a stack of mail. Today the estate lives behind passwords: photos in the cloud, banking with no paper statements, a business that runs on email, loyalty points, domain names, and — increasingly — cryptocurrency that no institution can recover if the keys are lost. When someone dies without planning for any of it, families face a double loss: first the person, then the irreplaceable pieces of their life locked behind a login screen.
Oregon was actually the first state in the nation to adopt the modern legal fix — the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, or RUFADAA, codified in ORS chapter 119 and effective January 1, 2017. This article explains what the law does, the traps built into it, and the practical steps that make your digital estate manageable instead of tragic.
More than most people think. A working inventory includes:
Two categories deserve special attention. Cryptocurrency in a self-custodied wallet is bearer property: whoever holds the private keys owns it, and if the keys die with you, the asset is gone — permanently, with no customer service line to call. And your primary email account is the master key to everything else, which makes access to it the single most important item on the list.
RUFADAA answers a question that used to trap families in dead ends: what may a fiduciary — your personal representative, trustee, or agent under a power of attorney — legally access after your death or incapacity? Before the law, federal privacy statutes and providers’ terms of service meant that even a court-appointed executor could be refused. Oregon’s ORS chapter 119 created a clear hierarchy of authority:
The hierarchy holds the two traps. Trap one: an online tool designation you set years ago and forgot overrides your will — exactly like a stale beneficiary designation on a retirement account. Trap two: silence. If neither the online tool nor your documents say anything, the default is the terms of service, and your family may receive, at most, a catalogue of messages rather than their contents. The fix is to work the hierarchy deliberately: set the online tools where they exist, and put express digital-asset authority in every core document.
"Your will controls your house and your bank account — but a checkbox you clicked in 2019 can control your email. Digital assets demand that the plan and the settings agree."
The legal layer: your will, revocable trust, and financial power of attorney should each contain express RUFADAA authorization — granting your fiduciary access to digital assets and, where you choose, to the content of electronic communications, since content requires explicit consent. Incapacity matters as much as death: a power of attorney with digital authority lets someone pay your bills and run your accounts if you are alive but unable. These provisions slot naturally into the plan structures we discuss in our article on joint revocable trusts.
The practical layer is just as important. Keep a current inventory of accounts and assets — a password manager with an emergency-access feature is the cleanest tool — and never put passwords or crypto keys in the will itself, which becomes a public court record in probate. For cryptocurrency, document where assets are held and how keys are secured, and leave your fiduciary instructions sufficient to recover them, stored securely and separately. Then tell your chosen people where to look. The best-drafted plan fails if no one knows it exists.
Digital-asset planning is now standard in every estate plan we build: RUFADAA authorization in the will, trust, and power of attorney; guidance on setting each major provider’s legacy tools so they agree with the plan; and a practical system for the inventory and keys — including crypto — that your family can actually use under stress. If your existing documents predate 2017, they almost certainly need this update.
To make sure the digital half of your life is as protected as the physical half — in Eugene, Lane County, or anywhere in Oregon — schedule a consultation and we will bring your plan up to date.
If your plan predates smartphones — or just never mentions your accounts — it has a gap. We can close it as part of a complete Oregon estate plan.
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