Digital Assets: What Happens to Your Online Life When You Die
19 July 2026 · 3 min read
A generation ago, an executor cleared a desk and a filing cabinet. Now the estate includes an email account, a photo library, cloud storage, cryptocurrency, domain names, PayPal balances, loyalty points and a social media presence — most of it invisible and password-protected. Wills are only starting to catch up.
What is actually "property" — and what is not
- Genuinely yours to leave: cryptocurrency, money in payment accounts (PayPal and similar), domain names, websites and their revenue, monetised channels' income streams, and files you created — manuscripts, photos you took, code.
- Mostly licences, not property: your iTunes/Kindle/Steam "libraries" are typically personal, non-transferable licences that end at death. You cannot leave your Kindle library to your daughter, however real it feels.
- Accounts themselves: email and social media accounts are governed by each platform's terms. Executors generally cannot demand login access; they use the platform's own death processes.
The two real problems: discovery and access
The practical crisis is rarely legal — it is that nobody knows what exists or how to reach it. Executors cannot administer assets they cannot find, and their duty includes digital value like crypto. Solve it with a digital inventory: a maintained list of accounts and assets (not passwords) stored with your will, plus a separate secure route to credentials — a password manager's emergency access feature is the modern answer, granting a named person access after a waiting period. Never put passwords in the will itself: wills become public documents after probate.
Crypto deserves its own paragraph
Cryptocurrency held in self-custody is the most losable asset in any estate: no institution to write to, no reset process. Whoever holds the keys holds the coins — and if no one holds them, the value is gone permanently. If you hold meaningful crypto, document what exists and engineer key recovery for your executors (specialist custody, multi-signature arrangements, or sealed instructions lodged with your solicitor). It is also taxable estate property, so valuations matter for inheritance tax.
What the platforms offer
Use the built-in tools where they exist: Google's Inactive Account Manager and Apple's Legacy Contact hand chosen people access to photos and files; Facebook offers memorialisation or deletion via a legacy contact. Setting these up takes minutes and operates independently of probate — for sentimental assets like photo libraries, they are far more reliable than hoping an executor can argue with a platform's bereavement team.
What to put in the will itself
Keep the will general and durable: define digital assets broadly, give executors explicit power to access, manage and dispose of them, and leave specific valuable items (a domain portfolio, a monetised channel) to named beneficiaries like any other asset. Express wishes about accounts — memorialise or delete — in a letter of wishes alongside, where you can update them freely (without remaking the will).
This is general information about the law in England and Wales, not personalised legal advice. Rules, thresholds and processes change, and Scotland and Northern Ireland have different rules in places — for anything that depends on your own circumstances, it is worth speaking to a solicitor (ideally one accredited by STEP or Solicitors for the Elderly) or checking GOV.UK and Citizens Advice for current detail.
Common questions
Can my family just log in with my passwords after I die?+
It is common and rarely prosecuted, but technically it usually breaches the platform’s terms and computer misuse law — and for financial accounts it can genuinely complicate estate administration. The clean route is executor authority plus each platform’s death process, with password-manager emergency access for the personal and sentimental.
What happens to loyalty points and air miles?+
Scheme rules decide. Some (notably certain airline schemes) allow transfer to family on death, others cancel points outright — and balances can be worth hundreds of pounds. Executors should check each scheme; listing memberships in your digital inventory is what makes that possible.
Are digital assets counted for inheritance tax?+
Anything with market value is estate property: crypto, domain names, monetised channels, account balances. Sentimental data has no tax value, but valuable digital property is valued at death like everything else — another reason executors need to know it exists.
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