When a Fort Worth family loses a parent, the practical work of settling an estate used to mean a filing cabinet, a safe deposit box, and a few bank statements. Today it also means a phone that only unlocks with a fingerprint that no longer exists, a cryptocurrency wallet with no paper trail, and a Facebook account that keeps sending birthday reminders for someone who has passed away.
Estate planning hasn’t fully caught up. Most wills and trusts drafted even five years ago say nothing about digital assets — and the ones that do often get it wrong in ways that create real legal problems for the people left behind.
What counts as a ‘digital asset’
The term covers more than most people expect: cryptocurrency and NFTs, online banking and investment accounts, domain names and websites, monetized social media or YouTube channels, cloud storage full of photos and documents, email accounts, and subscription services that keep billing a card long after anyone’s checking it. A growing number of Fort Worth families have real value — sometimes six figures of it — sitting in accounts a traditional estate plan never mentions.
| Cryptocurrency / self-custody wallets | Permanently unrecoverable without keys — no customer service to call |
| Social media accounts | Family locked out; account may be memorialized or deleted without input |
| Cloud storage / photos | Years of family photos and documents inaccessible |
| Domain names / online businesses | Revenue-generating assets lapse or get seized by registrars |
| Subscriptions | Continue billing the estate for months after death | Asset Type | Typical Risk If Unplanned |
|---|
Why Texas families specifically need to pay attention
Texas has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA), the law that governs whether an executor or trustee can legally access a deceased person’s digital accounts. Without the right language in a will or trust, a fiduciary can be legally blocked from logging into accounts — even with the password in hand. Under federal privacy law, accessing someone else’s account without proper authorization can be treated the same as unauthorized access, regardless of family relationship or good intentions.
This isn’t a hypothetical. Families across Tarrant County have spent months in probate court specifically over digital assets that a properly drafted plan would have handled in an afternoon.
The three categories every Fort Worth estate plan should address
- Access — does your executor have explicit legal authority (RUFADAA-compliant language) and a way to actually find your accounts?
- Instructions — what should happen to each category of asset? Transferred, memorialized, closed, sold?
- Security — how are passwords and keys stored so they’re accessible to the right person without being a security risk while you’re alive?
What NOT to do
Don’t write passwords or crypto seed phrases directly into your will. A will becomes a public record during probate — anyone can read it. Instead, use a secure password manager or digital vault, and reference its existence (not its contents) in your estate planning documents.
A short starting checklist
- List every account that holds money, memories, or business value — not just the obvious ones.
- Choose a digital executor, who may or may not be the same person as your general executor.
- Use a password manager or digital vault, and make sure your executor knows it exists and how to get in.
- Update your will or trust with RUFADAA-compliant language granting explicit digital asset access.
- Revisit the plan every year or two — this is the fastest-changing category of any estate plan.
This is the first article in a series on digital estate planning for Fort Worth families. Each piece below goes deeper into one part of this picture.
In this series
- What Are Digital Assets? A Plain-English Inventory
- RUFADAA in Texas, Explained
- Crypto and Estate Planning
- Password Managers vs. Digital Vaults
- What Happens to Your Social Media After You Die
- The Three Questions Every Client Should Be Asked
- Choosing a Digital Executor
- NFTs, Domains, and Online Businesses
- Why a Will Should Never Contain Your Passwords
- Avoiding Probate Delays With Cryptocurrency
- A Digital Asset Inventory Checklist
- Subscription Services and Digital Clutter
- Biometric Security and Estate Access
- Common Mistakes Fort Worth Families Make
Need Your Website or Social Media to Match This Level of Trust?
I’m Zain — a graphic designer and AI solution provider helping Fort Worth firms turn outdated websites and inconsistent social media into something clients actually trust. If anything in this article felt familiar, that’s usually a design and content problem, not a legal one — and it’s fixable faster than most firms expect.
Email info@zainiqbalworks.com — let’s talk about what your site and social presence could look like.