RUFADAA
SECURITYDEFINITION
The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act — a model state law giving executors and trustees legal authority to access a deceased or incapacitated person's digital assets, including bitcoin. Adopted with real variation in most, but not all, U.S. states.
Before RUFADAA existed, executors settling an estate had no clear legal standing to access a deceased person's email, cloud storage, or online financial accounts — service providers could refuse on privacy grounds even with a valid will in hand. The Uniform Law Commission drafted RUFADAA in 2015 specifically to close that gap, and most states have since enacted some version of it.
For bitcoin, RUFADAA solves exactly half the problem. It gives an executor the legal right to request access to accounts and records — custodial exchange balances, for instance — the same way a bank account transfers through probate. What it cannot do is generate the technical means to spend self-custodied bitcoin: no law can produce a lost private key. RUFADAA authority is necessary for exchange-held funds and useless on its own for a wallet whose seed phrase nobody else knows.
Adoption and specifics vary meaningfully by state — some give broad default access, others require explicit authorization in a will, and a handful of states still haven't adopted any version of the act. Where your estate is administered, and whether your will explicitly references digital assets, materially changes how smoothly RUFADAA authority actually functions in practice.
IN A SENTENCE
"RUFADAA gets your executor into your exchange account — it does nothing for the coins only your seed phrase can unlock."
Key facts
Common questions
Does RUFADAA give my executor my seed phrase?
No. RUFADAA grants legal standing to request access from a service provider — an exchange, for example. It has no mechanism to reveal a private key or seed phrase you haven't separately documented and secured.
Does every state have the same RUFADAA rules?
No. Most states have adopted some version, but the specifics — default access levels, what a will must explicitly state — vary by state, and a small number of states have not adopted the act at all.