Your phone holds years of photos, your email holds financial records and your social media holds memories your family may want to keep. As you plan your estate, you may wonder who can open those accounts. Understanding Arizona’s rules may help you decide what to set up now.
Online accounts do not pass to your family automatically
Bank accounts, including online banks, and real estate pass through a will, trust or beneficiary designation, and your personal representative does not need your login to claim them. Many other online accounts work differently. Estate planning authorities frequently warn that standard estate plans fail to address digital property.
In Arizona, your family or personal representative does not automatically gain access to those accounts. What they can reach depends on your instructions and the platform’s rules.
Platform tools can override your will
Some platforms let you choose what happens to your account after you die through a setting on the account itself. In Arizona, that choice overrides a contrary instruction in your will, trust or power of attorney, as long as you can still change or delete it. If you give no instructions, the platform’s terms of service decide.
Executors may see who you contacted but not what you wrote
Arizona law lets a personal representative request a list of the people you communicated with, along with dates and times, unless you prohibited it. To read the content of your emails or messages, your personal representative needs proof that you consented or a court order.
Your will or trust can supply that consent when you have not used a platform setting. Naming the accounts and saying whether your personal representative may read your messages may remove guesswork for your family.
Platforms generally must respond within 60 days after receiving the required documents, and your personal representative may ask a court to order compliance if they do not.
Planning now may protect your digital legacy
Every account is different, and platform rules change. Because a platform setting overrides your will, the two need to match, or your instructions may conflict. An Arizona estate planning attorney can review your documents, explain your options, and help you add digital access instructions to your plan.
