Powers of Attorney: Digital Assets & Oversight

Two of the most significant (and most overlooked) POA issues involve digital property and the lack of any built-in accountability mechanism for agents. Both are areas where the law has evolved faster than most people's estate planning documents.

POA and Digital Assets: The New Frontier

Pennsylvania adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) in 2020, codified at 20 Pa.C.S. Chapter 39. RUFADAA gives agents under a POA (along with executors, trustees, and guardians) legal authority to access the principal's digital assets, subject to the principal's directions and the terms of service agreements with the custodian (Google, Apple, Facebook, financial platforms, etc.).

The law is clear. The practical reality is harder. Legal authority to access a digital account is meaningless if the agent does not know the account exists or cannot get past the login screen.

This is an acute problem with:

• Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital currencies held in self-custodied wallets (hardware wallets, software wallets) are controlled by private keys or seed phrases. There is no "forgot password" reset. There is no customer service number. If the principal becomes incapacitated and the agent does not have the seed phrase, those assets are permanently inaccessible. No court order, no statute, and no amount of legal authority can recover a lost private key. Exchange-held crypto (Coinbase, Kraken) is somewhat easier (RUFADAA gives the agent a legal basis to contact the exchange), but the verification process is slow and the exchange may not cooperate without a court order regardless of what the statute says.
• Online-only financial accounts: Brokerages, savings accounts, and payment platforms that exist only online (Robinhood, Wealthfront, Venmo, PayPal) may require multi-factor authentication tied to the principal's phone. If the agent does not have access to the principal's phone or email, the account recovery process can take weeks.
• Business accounts: If the principal runs a business through online platforms (Shopify, Stripe, AWS, domain registrars), loss of access can mean loss of revenue, loss of customers, and potentially loss of the business itself.

The solution is planning, not litigation. When we draft a POA, I discuss digital asset management with the client and recommend maintaining a secure digital asset inventory, a list of accounts, credentials, and recovery methods stored in a location the agent can access (a fireproof safe, a sealed envelope with the attorney, or a dedicated password manager with the master password shared with the agent). The POA itself should include specific RUFADAA authorization language and, where appropriate, direction to custodians to grant the agent access.

Agent Accounting: The Orphans' Court Backstop

A power of attorney grants enormous authority with minimal oversight. Unlike an executor (who can be cited to file an account once six months have passed since the grant of letters was advertised, and whose account then goes to the Clerk of the Orphans' Court and is placed on the audit list) or a trustee (who accounts to beneficiaries and can be compelled to account by the court), a POA agent operates largely in the dark. Nothing is filed as a matter of course, and no court sees the agent's transactions unless someone asks it to look.

This makes POA abuse a leading vector of financial elder exploitation in Pennsylvania, and the hardest to detect until significant damage has been done.

But the law provides a remedy. The Orphans' Court has jurisdiction over all matters involving agents acting under a power of attorney (20 Pa.C.S. § 711(22)), and it can be asked to step in. The most important levers are the duty to account and the court's broader supervisory authority, which covers the following:

• Compel the agent to file an account, a full accounting of every dollar received, spent, invested, and transferred under the POA. Under 20 Pa.C.S. § 5610, an agent must file an account whenever directed to do so by the court, and the account uses the same form required for executors and trustees (Pa.O.C. Rule 2.1). Separately, under 20 Pa.C.S. § 5601.3(d), and unless the POA provides otherwise, the agent must disclose receipts, disbursements, and transactions on request. The people who can make that request are the principal, a guardian, a conservator, another fiduciary acting for the principal, a governmental agency authorized to protect the principal's welfare, and, upon the principal's death, the personal representative or successor in interest of the principal's estate. The agent then has 30 days to comply or to explain in writing why more time is needed, and another 30 days to comply after that.
• Review the agent's conduct, including whether the agent complied with the duties under § 5601.3 (good faith, best interest, scope of authority) and whether any self-dealing occurred.
• Surcharge the agent. If the agent mismanaged assets, made unauthorized gifts, or engaged in self-dealing, the court can apply the principles of law and equity that supplement Chapter 56 (20 Pa.C.S. § 5612) to hold the agent personally liable for the losses.
• Remove the agent and revoke the POA, the nuclear option. As the statutory notice in § 5601 itself warns, a court can take away an agent's powers if it finds the agent is not acting properly. This is usually combined with a petition for guardianship if the principal is still alive and incapacitated.

POA accounting proceedings run on both sides: families seeking to compel an accounting from a suspected bad actor, and agents who acted properly but need to demonstrate their conduct to skeptical family members. If you suspect a POA agent is misusing an elderly family member's assets, do not wait. The longer the abuse continues, the less likely recovery becomes.

Legal and factual content on this page was last verified: Aug. 2026. If you are reading this significantly after that date, confirm key provisions with current statute text or contact our office.