The digital assets inventory
A Florida personal representative must file a verified inventory listing estate property with its fair market value. Half of what a modern person calls “my accounts” is not property at all. Telling the two apart is the job.
Fla. Stat. §733.604(1) requires a Florida personal representative to file a verified inventory listing the estate's property “with reasonable detail and including for each listed item its estimated fair market value at the date of the decedent's death.”
That sentence was written for houses, cars, bank accounts, and shares. Applied to a person who died in 2026, it produces a genuinely hard question about roughly forty things on their phone.
The sorting rule is simpler than the folklore suggests, and it has exactly two categories.
Things that are actually property
These belong on the inventory, and a personal representative who ignores them is leaving estate value on the table.
- Domain names. The leading authority is Kremen v. Cohen, 337 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2003) — the sex.com case. A forged letter caused the registrar to transfer the domain; the Ninth Circuit held that a domain name is intangible property capable of being converted, and that the registrant could sue in conversion. Domains are property, they have market value, they renew annually, and they are the single most commonly lost estate asset in this category, because nobody pays the renewal.
- Copyright in anything the decedent created. Photographs, manuscripts, music, software, video, designs. Copyright is property. It passes by will or by intestacy, it lasts for the author's life plus seventy years, and it is frequently worth more than the hardware it sits on.
- Cryptocurrency held at an exchange. An exchange is a custodian under §740.002(7). The balance is an asset, the account has a statement, and the §740.007 procedure works.
- Balances in payment and marketplace accounts. PayPal, Stripe, Etsy, eBay, Amazon seller accounts. The money is money. The account may not transfer, but the balance is payable to the estate.
- Revenue streams under contract. Advertising and creator-programme payments, app-store royalties, affiliate income, book and music royalties from digital distributors. These are receivables, and they are ordinary estate assets even when the platform account behind them is personal.
- Hardware, and what is on it. Under §733.607 the personal representative may take possession and control of estate property; §740.05(5) confirms a fiduciary with authority over tangible personal property may access it and any digital asset stored in it, as an authorised user for purposes of Florida's computer-crimes chapter, chapter 815.
Things that are permission, not property
Everything here dies with the account holder, subject to whatever discretion the company chooses to exercise. Listing them on an inventory at a value is usually wrong, and asking a court to order their transfer is always futile.
- Purchased media. Films, television, music, ebooks and audiobooks on the major platforms are sold under a personal, non-transferable licence. Apple's own Legacy Contact documentation excludes “movies, music, books, or subscriptions you purchased with your Apple Account.” The inheritance tool built by the seller expressly leaves out the thing you bought.
- Game accounts and libraries. The Steam Subscriber Agreement provides that a subscriber may not sell or otherwise transfer the account, and Valve's support has told bereaved families that accounts and games are non-transferable, cannot be merged into another account, and cannot pass under a will. Similar terms run across the major platforms. There are reports of discretionary help at the support desk; discretion is not a right.
- Loyalty points and airline miles. Most programmes state that miles or points remain the property of the programme rather than the member, and are not transferable on death. Practice varies and is discretionary: American Airlines and United have each published processes under which they may, in their sole discretion, credit accrued mileage to an authorised person on satisfactory documentation and payment of fees. Delta's terms have been reported as not permitting transfer on death at all. Ask, promptly, and do not budget for the answer.
- Subscriptions. Streaming, software, cloud storage tiers, memberships. Cancel them. They are liabilities, not assets, and they keep charging a closed card until somebody notices.
- Social media accounts as such. The profile is not property. What the platform will do is memorialise it, delete it, or — under a legacy-contact setting — hand limited powers to a named person. See the online-tools entry in this archive.
Three categories that genuinely are contested
NFTs. An NFT is a token on a ledger that points at something. Buying it transfers the token. It does not, by default, transfer copyright in the underlying artwork — some projects grant broad commercial licences to holders, most grant a narrow personal-use licence, and the licence terms live on a project website rather than on the chain. Two reported disputes make the point from opposite directions: Hermès International v. Rothschild, 1:22-cv-00384 (S.D.N.Y.), where a jury on February 8, 2023 found the “MetaBirkins” NFT project liable for trademark infringement, dilution and cybersquatting and awarded $133,000; and Miramax v. Tarantino (C.D. Cal. 2021), a dispute over who held the rights to mint NFTs of Pulp Fiction screenplay material, which the parties settled in 2022. For an estate: the token is property and goes on the inventory. The rights attached to it are a separate question and need the project's licence read.
Email and cloud storage. These are the assets families actually want, and they are governed by the federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. §2701 et seq., which restricts what a provider may disclose. The leading decision is Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc. (Mass. 2017), holding that the Act does not bar a provider from disclosing to personal representatives who lawfully consent on the decedent's behalf — the reasoning Florida's Chapter 740 codifies. The account is not property; the contents may be, where the decedent created them.
Businesses that live inside an account. A monetised channel, a storefront, an app listing, a following. The revenue is a receivable and the intellectual property is property, but the account is a licence, and platforms differ wildly on whether they will re-credential a successor. This is the category where a well-drafted operating agreement and an entity holding the assets is worth more than any probate filing.
How a personal representative actually finds all of this
There is a sequence, and doing it in the wrong order costs months.
- One: secure the hardware and the phone number, on day one. §733.607 authorises it. Do not let the mobile line be cancelled — SMS second factors go with it, and that is the single most common irreversible mistake in the first month after a death.
- Two: get the catalogue, not the content. §740.007 entitles the personal representative to the catalogue of electronic communications — under §740.002(4), who the decedent corresponded with, when, and at what address — on a written request plus a certified death certificate and certified letters of administration, with no consent record required. Content under §740.006 needs consent or a court order and is usually unnecessary. The catalogue is the discovery tool: it names the exchanges, the registrars, the brokers, the insurers, and the subscriptions.
- Three: read the bank and card statements backwards for twenty-four months. Every recurring charge is an account. Every annual charge is a domain renewal, a hosting bill, or a subscription nobody remembered.
- Four: check the password manager before anything else. If the decedent used one, it is the inventory, already written. If it has an emergency-access feature that was configured, use it.
- Five: renew the domains immediately. They expire on a schedule that does not care about probate, and a lapsed domain is gone in weeks.
- Six: write to the custodians in writing, and start the 60-day clock. §740.06 requires a custodian to comply within 60 days of receiving the required information, and lets the fiduciary ask a Florida circuit court to compel compliance. Phone calls do not start clocks.
- Seven: value what is property and say so about what is not. The inventory under §733.604(1) needs a fair market value for each listed item. A non-transferable licence is not an item; a domain, a copyright, a token, and an exchange balance are.
Timeline
- 1986Congress enacts the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. §2701 et seq., restricting provider disclosure of stored communications — the federal backdrop to every request in this area.
- Jul 25, 2003Kremen v. Cohen, 337 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir.): a domain name is intangible property capable of conversion. The clearest holding that a digital thing can be owned.
- Jul 1, 2016Florida's Chapter 740 takes effect, creating the catalogue and content procedures that a personal representative uses to find and reach digital assets.
- Oct 2017Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc.: the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court holds the Stored Communications Act does not bar disclosure to personal representatives who lawfully consent for the decedent.
- Nov 2021Miramax sues Quentin Tarantino in the Central District of California over NFTs of Pulp Fiction screenplay material — the rights, not the token, being the dispute. The parties settle in 2022.
- Feb 8, 2023A Manhattan jury finds for Hermès in Hermès International v. Rothschild over the MetaBirkins NFTs — trademark infringement, dilution and cybersquatting, $133,000 in damages.
- May 2024Valve's position on Steam account inheritance is widely reported: accounts and games are non-transferable and cannot pass under a will.
- 2026No US state has legislated a general right to inherit a licensed digital account. The sorting rule — property versus permission — is still the whole answer.
What actually went wrong
- The domain expires during administration. The most valuable asset in this category renews annually on a credit card that has been cancelled. Nobody notices until the registration is gone.
- Families budget for the game library and the miles. Both are permission. Steam accounts are non-transferable by agreement, and loyalty points are programme property with discretionary transfer at best.
- Nobody asks for the catalogue. §740.007 needs no consent record and produces the list of every institution the decedent dealt with. It is the cheapest discovery in probate and it is routinely skipped in favour of a content request that requires consent nobody gave.
- The phone gets disconnected in week one. Every SMS two-factor code goes with it, and accounts that were reachable become unreachable.
- NFT buyers assume they bought the artwork. The token transfers; the copyright and trademark do not, unless the project's licence says so. Hermès v. Rothschild is what happens at the far end of that misunderstanding.
Would it have gone that way in Florida?
Florida gives the personal representative real tools — but only for property. Permission is not property, and §740.004(2) says so.
Florida's duties come first, because they are what makes this urgent rather than academic. §733.604(1) requires a verified inventory of estate property in reasonable detail, with an estimated fair market value at the date of death for each item. Inventories and accountings are confidential and exempt from the public-records law under the same section, which is worth knowing — the will is public, the inventory is not.
The authority to go looking. §733.607 gives the personal representative the right to take possession or control of the decedent's property and to take reasonable steps to preserve it. §733.612(20) authorises prosecuting or defending claims in any jurisdiction to protect the estate. And §740.05(5) makes a fiduciary with authority over tangible personal property an authorised user for purposes of chapter 815, Florida's computer-crimes chapter, with the right to access the property and any digital asset stored in it. The laptop is estate property and opening it is not an offence.
The discovery tool nobody uses. §740.007 entitles the personal representative to the catalogue of a deceased user's electronic communications and other non-content digital assets, on a written request, a certified copy of the death certificate, and certified letters of administration. No record of the user's consent is required. Under §740.002(4) the catalogue identifies every person the decedent communicated with, when, and at what address — which is to say, every bank, broker, exchange, registrar, insurer and subscription service. Content under §740.006 is harder and needs consent or a court order, and for most estates it is not needed. §740.06 gives the custodian 60 days and gives the fiduciary a route to a circuit court order.
The ceiling. §740.004(2) provides that Chapter 740 confers no new or expanded rights other than those held by the user, and §740.05(2) subjects fiduciary authority to the terms of service, to other law including copyright law, to the scope of the fiduciary's duties, and forbids using it to impersonate the user. That is the whole answer on Steam accounts, purchased films, and airline miles: the decedent held permission, so the estate holds permission, and permission that terminates on death has terminated.
A Florida drafting trap worth naming. §732.515 lets a will incorporate a separate written list disposing of items of tangible personal property. It is a genuinely useful section — update the list without re-executing the will — and it does not reach digital files, domain names, tokens, or accounts, none of which are tangible personal property. Put the record collection on the §732.515 list; put the domain portfolio and the copyrights in the will or the trust.
And the clocks. §733.702 requires claims against the estate by the later of three months after first publication or thirty days after personal service; §733.710 bars claims absolutely at two years from death. Domains, hosting, and marketplace accounts run on their own renewal calendars that are shorter than any of those. Whichever clock is shortest is the one that governs the asset.
Do this. Build a one-page inventory now, while you are alive — every account, what it is, and where the access material is kept — and store it with the estate documents rather than inside the will, which becomes a public court filing under §732.901. Move domain names, copyrights and revenue-generating accounts into a trust or an entity, so a successor holds them without a probate order. Set the online tools so tier one of §740.003 is not empty. And tell your executor which of your accounts are property and which are permission, because sorting that out from the outside, after you are gone, is the expensive part.
What people ask us about this.
Further reading
Third-party sites. Not ours, not endorsed, not kept current by us — just the places worth going next.
Sources
- Kremen v. Cohen, 337 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2003) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Jul 2003
- Jury finds that MetaBirkin NFTs infringed Hermès' trademark rights — Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, Feb 2023
- Hermès defeats MetaBirkins in the first NFT trademark trial — Bloomberg Law, Feb 2023
- No leaving a Steam account in a will after you die, according to Valve — GamingOnLinux, May 2024
- What happens to frequent flyer miles when you die? — AwardWallet
- How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple Account — Apple Support
- Fla. Stat. §733.604 — Inventories and accountings; public records exemptions — The Florida Senate
- Fla. Stat. §740.007 — Disclosure of other digital assets of deceased user — The Florida Senate
- Fla. Stat. §740.004 — Terms-of-service agreement — The Florida Senate
If this is your situation
Free 30-minute consult. Plain English. No pressure.
Nearly every case in this archive turned on something ordinary — an unwitnessed page, a stale beneficiary line, a document nobody could find. Those are cheap to fix while you're alive and expensive to fix afterward.