What RUFADAA Covers
Digital life is not something most people think about when planning their estate. But consider how much of daily life now exists online: email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage, cryptocurrency wallets, digital photo libraries, subscription services, and online banking. When someone passes away or becomes incapacitated, someone needs legal authority to access, manage, or close those accounts.
This chapter may be cited as the revised uniform fiduciary access to digital assets act.
A.R.S. § 14-13101Before RUFADAA, families often found themselves locked out of a loved one's digital accounts with no legal path to access them. Service providers like Google, Apple, and Facebook had their own policies, but no consistent legal standard existed. RUFADAA changed that by creating a clear, uniform framework that balances a person's privacy interests with the practical needs of estate administration.
Why This Matters for Estate Planning
RUFADAA works alongside your other estate planning documents. If you have a living trust, a will, or a power of attorney, those documents can include specific instructions about your digital assets. RUFADAA gives the people named in those documents the legal standing to act on your behalf with online service providers.
Without RUFADAA, even a properly appointed personal representative or successor trustee could be denied access to email, financial accounts, or important records stored in the cloud. This statute closes that gap and provides the legal foundation for managing the digital side of an estate.
