Key Questions in Digital Estate Continuity
Digital estate continuity is a young discipline operating at the intersection of rapidly evolving technology, developing law, and emerging professional practice. Many of its most important questions remain open — contested among practitioners, unresolved in courts, underdetermined by statute, and insufficiently studied by researchers. This document presents the key questions that define the frontier of the field. It is intended to guide research, inform policy, and orient professional practice toward the areas of greatest uncertainty.
In this section, we pose several questions around legality and authorization.
Q1.1 — What constitutes sufficient legal authority for digital estate administration in the absence of explicit statutory guidance?
RUFADAA and its equivalents provide authority frameworks for certain account types in certain jurisdictions. But a substantial proportion of digital assets — AI systems, tokenized assets, platform-governed economic rights, non-custodial cryptocurrency — operate outside these frameworks. What combination of instruments (will, trust, POA, platform designation, court order) constitutes sufficient authority for each asset class, and how should conflicts among instruments be resolved?
Q1.2 — How should post-mortem data rights be governed in jurisdictions that do not extend privacy rights beyond death?
GDPR provides limited post-mortem data rights. Most jurisdictions provide even fewer. But the practical privacy interests of deceased individuals — sensitive communications, medical data, private correspondence — do not disappear because legal rights do. What governance framework appropriately balances the privacy interests of the deceased against the legitimate access needs of fiduciaries, families, and regulators?
Q1.3 — When does platform Terms of Service governance constitute an impermissible override of statutory estate authority?
RUFADAA makes platform online tools superior to testamentary instruments — but it does not address platform refusal to honor statutory executor authority, or platform terms that effectively nullify estate rights. At what point does platform contractual governance cross the line into statutory violation? How should courts and regulators respond?
Q1.4 — What is the legal status of a Digital Execution Plan, and should it receive explicit statutory recognition?
The DEP is a governance annex, not a testamentary instrument. But its practical utility in estate administration is substantial. Should DEPs receive statutory recognition as an evidence-carrying document in estate proceedings? What evidentiary standards should govern their use?
Digital Estate Planning Institute 