Beyond the Will: Sorting Out Your Digital Estate Before Someone Else Has To

Most people assume their executor will simply step into their shoes after death — opening the post, settling the bills and distributing what's left. For physical property, that's broadly true. For your digital life, it's far more complicated. A lifetime of photographs, a cryptocurrency portfolio, a decade of subscription services and a small fortune sitting in online accounts can all become effectively invisible the moment the account holder dies.

What Happens to Your Accounts by Default

The starting point under English and Welsh law is that digital assets — like any other property — form part of your estate. But ownership of an asset is not the same as access to it. Your executor may have every legal right to your online accounts, yet no practical way to get in.

Each platform sets its own rules. Social media accounts typically allow a profile to be memorialised or closed on receipt of a death certificate, but rarely permit loved ones to read private messages. Online bank accounts can usually be dealt with by the executor once probate is granted, though the process is often slower than dealing with a traditional branch. Cloud-stored photos and documents sit somewhere in between: the contents belong to your estate, but the provider may be contractually and legally constrained in granting access — sometimes by data protection rules that technically survive death.

Cryptocurrency is the starkest example. A Bitcoin wallet protected by a private key or seed phrase is, in practical terms, inaccessible to anyone who doesn't have those credentials. There is no customer service desk to appeal to and no password reset that survives the loss of the key. Estimates suggest billions of pounds of cryptocurrency worldwide has been permanently lost in this way.

Why Standard Wills Often Fall Short

A conventional will drafted a decade ago will rarely mention digital assets at all. Even recent wills often handle them clumsily. Listing passwords directly in a will is a mistake on two counts: a will becomes a public document once probate is granted, and the document will outlive the credentials themselves as passwords change.

There's also a legal grey area around what you can actually pass on. Some accounts — music libraries, e-books, loyalty points — are licences rather than property, and the terms of service may state they end on death. That doesn't mean they're worthless to your family, but it does mean the wording of your will and the structure of your records matter.

Practical Steps You Can Take Now

The solution is not to write everything down and hope for the best. It's to build a modest, secure system:

• Take an inventory. List your significant accounts: banking, investments, pensions, email, cloud storage, social media, subscriptions and any cryptocurrency wallets. Note where each is held, not the password itself.
• Store credentials securely. A reputable password manager with an emergency access feature, or an encrypted document held with your solicitor, strikes the right balance between accessibility and security.
• Name a digital executor. You can appoint a specific person in your will to handle digital matters — ideally someone comfortable with technology who understands your wishes about privacy.
• Give express authority in your will. Wording that grants your executors permission to access, manage and close digital accounts removes much of the uncertainty platforms and data protection rules create.
• Deal with crypto deliberately. Seed phrases should be stored offline, physically secured, and explained to at least one trusted person. Without them, the asset is gone.

A Conversation Worth Having

Death is an uncomfortable subject, and digital assets add a layer of abstraction that makes it easier to postpone. But the cost of postponement falls on your family: months of correspondence with platforms, photographs lost to a locked account, or savings that simply vanish.

At Infinity Legal, we encourage clients to treat their digital estate as part of the wider estate plan — reviewed alongside the will, updated when accounts change, and documented in plain terms. A short conversation now can spare your executors a long and frustrating hunt later. If your will predates your online life, it may be time for both to be refreshed.