Florida Probate for Digital and Financial Accounts (When There’s No Will)

Florida probate for digital and financial accounts is the court-supervised process of identifying, valuing, and distributing a deceased person’s bank accounts, brokerage holdings, cryptocurrency, and online assets through the Florida probate court. When someone dies without a will (intestate), Florida’s intestacy statutes — not the decedent’s wishes — decide who inherits these assets, and a personal representative appointed by the court must gather them, often by serving legal documents on banks and digital platforms. The rules governing access to email, social media, and stored data are set out in Florida’s version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, found in Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes.

I’ve handled enough Miami probate matters to tell you that the financial and digital side is where families get stuck the longest. A house has a deed. A car has a title. But a Coinbase wallet, a Zelle-linked checking account, and a decade of PayPal transactions? Those can sit frozen for months if nobody knows how to ask for them properly. This article walks through how it actually works in Florida when there is no will.

What Counts as a Financial or Digital Asset in Probate

Before you can administer anything, you have to know what category it falls into. Florida probate treats assets differently depending on how they’re titled and whether a beneficiary was named.

Broadly, the accounts you’ll encounter break down like this:

• Traditional financial accounts — checking, savings, certificates of deposit, money market accounts, and brokerage or investment accounts held in the decedent’s sole name.
• Retirement and insurance accounts — IRAs, 401(k)s, annuities, and life insurance, which usually pass by beneficiary designation outside probate.
• Digital financial assets — cryptocurrency wallets, exchange accounts (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance.US), Venmo and PayPal balances, and online-only bank accounts.
• Non-financial digital assets — email accounts, cloud storage, photo libraries, social media profiles, domain names, and loyalty or rewards points.
• Digital assets with hidden value — a monetized YouTube channel, an Etsy or eBay seller account, or an Amazon KDP royalty stream that keeps paying after death.

The Probate vs. Non-Probate Line

Here’s the distinction that matters most. A solely owned bank account with no payable-on-death (POD) designation is a probate asset — it can only be reached through a court-appointed personal representative. The same account with a named POD beneficiary, or held jointly with rights of survivorship, generally bypasses probate entirely. Cryptocurrency held in a self-custody wallet has no beneficiary mechanism at all, so it almost always lands in probate unless it was titled into a trust.

When someone dies intestate, far more of their assets tend to fall on the probate side of that line, simply because people who never wrote a will usually never set up POD designations or transfer-on-death registrations either.

How Intestate Succession Affects Who Inherits These Accounts

If there’s no will, Florida Statutes Chapter 732 controls who receives the financial accounts. The court doesn’t guess at intent; it applies a fixed hierarchy. Under section 732.102, a surviving spouse’s share depends on whether the decedent and the spouse had children together and whether either had children from other relationships. Section 732.103 then directs what passes to descendants, parents, or more distant relatives when there is no spouse.

This produces results that surprise families constantly. A long-term partner who was never married receives nothing under intestacy, no matter how many shared bank accounts existed. Adult children from a prior marriage may take a larger share of a checking account than the current spouse expects. These outcomes are statutory, and the digital nature of the asset changes nothing about who inherits it — a Bitcoin balance is distributed by the same rules as a savings account.

The Florida Probate Process for Accessing Accounts

Getting a bank or exchange to release funds follows a predictable sequence. The friction is almost never legal — it’s procedural and identity-driven.

1. Open the estate. File a petition for administration in the circuit court of the county where the decedent lived (in Miami, that’s the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County). For estates over $75,000, this is formal administration; smaller estates may qualify for summary administration under Florida Statutes section 735.201.
2. Get the personal representative appointed. Because there’s no will naming an executor, the court appoints a personal representative according to the priority in section 733.301 — surviving spouse first, then the person selected by a majority of heirs.
3. Obtain Letters of Administration. This is the single most important document. Banks and brokerages will not speak to you in any meaningful way without certified Letters proving your authority.
4. Inventory and demand. Serve the Letters, a certified death certificate, and a written demand on each institution. Most large banks have a dedicated estate or “deceased account services” department.
5. Collect, report, and distribute. Funds are deposited into an estate account, listed on the inventory filed under section 733.604, and ultimately distributed to the intestate heirs after creditors and expenses are paid.

The estate account piece trips people up. You cannot legally move a deceased person’s funds into your own account. The personal representative opens a separate estate checking account using the estate’s own tax identification number (an EIN from the IRS), and every dollar flows through it.

What Florida’s Digital Assets Law Lets a Personal Representative Do

Chapter 740 of the Florida Statutes — the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act — governs whether you can get into email, cloud accounts, and platform data. The law sets a three-tier order of priority. First, an online tool offered by the provider itself (Google’s Inactive Account Manager or Facebook’s legacy contact, for example) controls if the decedent used it. If not, the decedent’s will or trust language controls — but in an intestate estate, there is none. That throws you onto the third tier: the provider’s terms of service, plus a court order.

In practice, this means that for an intestate decedent who never set up a legacy contact, the personal representative often needs a specific court order directing the provider to disclose the contents of an account. A custodian like Google or Apple is permitted under Chapter 740 to require that order before turning over the content of communications. Plan for this. It is one of the most common delays in administering a modern estate.

Cryptocurrency: The Hardest Asset in Probate

Crypto deserves its own section because it breaks the normal recovery model. With a bank, the money exists whether or not you have the password — the institution holds it, and a court order forces disclosure. With self-custody cryptocurrency, the private key is the asset. If the only copy of a seed phrase died with the decedent, no court order, no personal representative, and no statute can recover those coins. They are mathematically unreachable.

Where crypto sits on a custodial exchange like Coinbase or Kraken, the situation improves dramatically. Those platforms have estate processes, and they’ll release holdings to a personal representative who provides Letters of Administration and a death certificate. So the first question I ask a family is always: was the crypto on an exchange or in a private wallet? The answer determines whether we’re doing paperwork or hunting for a piece of paper in a safe deposit box.

For probate purposes, valuation also matters. Cryptocurrency is volatile, so the inventory should reflect fair market value as of the date of death, and significant swings during administration may need to be documented for the heirs and the court.

Common Mistakes Families Make With Digital Estates

A few patterns repeat in nearly every digital-asset case that comes through a Miami probate practice:

• Logging in with the decedent’s password. It feels harmless, but accessing accounts without authority can violate provider terms and, in some cases, federal law. Wait for your Letters.
• Letting auto-payments drain the estate. Subscriptions, cloud storage, and recurring charges keep hitting a checking account long after death. Identify and cancel them early.
• Ignoring income-producing accounts. A seller account or monetized channel may owe the estate money — or owe taxes. Don’t let it lapse before it’s valued.
• Assuming small balances aren’t worth probate. Florida’s summary administration and the disposition-without-administration process under section 735.301 exist precisely for modest estates. There’s often a faster path.

When to Bring in a Probate Attorney

If the estate has nothing but a single jointly-held bank account, you may not need much help. But the moment you’re dealing with sole-name brokerage accounts, cryptocurrency, a court order to access a digital custodian, or intestate heirs who don’t agree on anything, you want experienced counsel guiding the administration. The mechanics of opening an estate, qualifying the personal representative, and serving demands on institutions are unforgiving of error, and a mistake can add months.

Our team focuses on exactly these situations across Miami and South Florida — you can learn more on our Florida probate overview or read about what happens to estates without a will. The same probate principles that govern these cases nationally are explained in depth by Morgan Legal’s New York office in their guide to , and where heirs dispute an estate, their breakdown of is a useful primer on the litigation that can follow. For Florida-specific representation, you can also reach the firm’s team directly.

Digital and financial accounts aren’t going to administer themselves, and in an intestate estate the clock starts the moment a relative tries to log in and gets locked out. If you’re facing that wall right now, contact our office and we’ll map out the fastest lawful route to the assets.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a bank release a deceased person's account without probate in Florida?

Sometimes. If the account had a payable-on-death beneficiary or was jointly held with rights of survivorship, the bank can release it outside probate to the surviving owner or named beneficiary. But a solely owned account with no beneficiary designation is a probate asset, and the bank will only release it to a personal representative who presents certified Letters of Administration and a death certificate. Very small estates may also qualify for summary administration or disposition without administration under Chapter 735 of the Florida Statutes.

What happens to cryptocurrency in Florida probate if there is no will?

Cryptocurrency is distributed under Florida’s intestacy rules in Chapter 732, just like any other asset. Recovery depends on where it’s stored. Crypto on a custodial exchange like Coinbase can usually be released to the personal representative with Letters of Administration. Crypto in a self-custody wallet is only recoverable if the private key or seed phrase can be located — if that information was lost at death, no court order can retrieve it.

Can a personal representative access the decedent's email and social media accounts?

It depends. Florida’s Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act in Chapter 740 sets the order of priority. If the decedent used an online tool like Google’s Inactive Account Manager, that controls. Without a will or such a tool, the personal representative typically must rely on the provider’s terms of service and may need a specific court order to obtain the contents of communications, which custodians like Google and Apple are permitted to require.

Who inherits financial accounts in Florida when someone dies without a will?

Florida Statutes sections 732.102 and 732.103 control. A surviving spouse’s share depends on whether the couple had children together and whether either spouse had children from other relationships. If there is no spouse, the assets pass to descendants, then parents, then more distant relatives in a fixed statutory order. Unmarried partners inherit nothing under intestacy regardless of shared accounts.

Do digital assets have to be listed in the Florida probate inventory?

Yes. Any digital or financial asset that is a probate asset must be identified and reported on the inventory filed under Florida Statutes section 733.604, with a fair market value as of the date of death. For volatile assets like cryptocurrency, that valuation should reflect the date-of-death price, and significant changes during administration may need to be documented for the heirs and the court.