Does a power of attorney cover my online accounts?

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This is general information, not legal advice. Yes, but the details matter more than most people expect, and RUFADAA (the model law covered in Q7/Q8) draws a sharper line here than it does for a will. We checked Florida's enactment of the law directly.

Florida's statute defines the relevant role first: "'Agent' means a person that is granted authority to act for a principal under a durable or nondurable power of attorney, whether denominated an agent, an attorney in fact, or otherwise." Source, §740.002(2) But the law splits what that agent can get into two very different tiers, and the split is exactly the one that matters for a family:

• The content of your messages (the actual body of your emails, DMs, texts) requires your power of attorney to say so specifically. §740.008: "To the extent a power of attorney expressly grants an agent authority over the content of electronic communications sent or received by the principal... a custodian shall disclose to the agent the content." A generic, boilerplate power of attorney that just says "manage my affairs" does not clear this bar — most standard POA forms don't mention "content of electronic communications" at all, because the phrase is specific to this statute.
• Everything else — a catalog of who you communicated with and when, and your other digital assets, short of message content — has a lower bar. §740.009: a custodian must disclose these to an agent "with specific authority over the digital assets or with general authority to act on behalf of the principal." A standard, broad power of attorney does clear this bar, because "general authority to act" is exactly what most POA documents grant.

So the honest answer is: your power of attorney almost certainly covers logistics — catalogs, account metadata, non-message digital assets — automatically, through its general authority language. It only covers the actual content of your private messages if you (or your attorney, when the document was drafted) specifically added language granting authority over "the content of electronic communications." If your POA is an off-the-shelf template, check it for that exact phrase before assuming your agent could read your email if you became incapacitated.

What we could not verify: whether every RUFADAA-enacting state splits authority the same message-content-vs-everything-else way Florida's statute does — we confirmed Florida's specific statutory text, not all fifty states' individual enactments.

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