RUFADAA, the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, is model legislation developed by the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) to address access to digital assets after an individual's death or incapacitation. It gives fiduciaries such as executors, trustees, agents under a power of attorney, and court-appointed guardians a legal framework for accessing and managing a person's digital assets, while balancing that access against privacy expectations and the terms-of-service agreements that govern online accounts.
Because RUFADAA is a model act, its real-world force depends on what your individual state legislature actually enacted. Adoption, statutory wording, and effective dates vary by jurisdiction. Louisiana and a handful of other states have taken different paths, and legislation continues to evolve. For that reason, definitive answers about the law in your state should come from the authoritative sources below.
How Eternal Pro Supports RUFADAA
Eternal Pro is built to support compliance with RUFADAA. It's important to understand that RUFADAA compliance isn't something any single tool delivers on its own. It's maintained through the coordination of three things working together: your client's estate plan, the data custodians who hold the digital assets (banks, email providers, cloud services), and the specific access instructions the user maintains within their Eternal Pro account. Eternal Pro provides the mechanism to record and communicate those wishes in a RUFADAA-aware structure, but the framework's effectiveness depends on keeping those instructions current and aligned with the broader estate plan.
Because the underlying legislation varies from state to state, and differs again across Canadian provinces, we strongly recommend consulting a qualified estate planning attorney to ensure digital asset directives are valid and enforceable in the relevant jurisdiction.
Researching Digital Asset Laws in Your State
The resources below are where estate practitioners can confirm the current law in their own jurisdiction. We point to these definitive sources rather than maintaining our own state-by-state summary, because the authoritative source should always be the law itself and the professional bodies that interpret it. This is a research starting point, not legal advice or a representation of your state's specific requirements.
- The Uniform Law Commission (ULC) enactment tracker — The definitive source for RUFADAA itself. The ULC maintains a current enactment status page at uniformlaws.org showing which states have adopted it, with bill numbers and effective dates. Check here first for adoption status.
- Your state's official code or statutes — The enacted law in your jurisdiction is what actually governs, and it may differ from the model act. Every state publishes its official code online; searching for "fiduciary access to digital assets" will surface the operative statute.
- Your state bar association's trusts & estates or probate section — Most state bars maintain a section that publishes practice guidance, CLE materials, and practitioner updates on how the law is applied locally. This is where the jurisdiction-specific nuance lives.
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