The average person today holds accounts across dozens of digital platforms — social media profiles, email accounts, cloud storage, subscription services, online banking, and potentially cryptocurrency wallets or NFT collections. Without planning, these digital assets can become inaccessible to families after a death, creating both practical challenges and missed opportunities.
Managing your digital legacy is no longer the exclusive concern of tech professionals or the wealthy. It is a practical estate planning step that anyone with an online presence should take.
Inventorying Your Digital Assets
The starting point for digital legacy planning is knowing what you have. Create a secure inventory of your digital accounts, including the platform name, your username or email address, and instructions for accessing the account. This inventory should be kept in a secure but accessible location — a password manager that your executor can access, a sealed letter with your attorney, or a secure document in your estate planning file.
Categorize your assets: financial accounts (online banking, PayPal, brokerage accounts), social media and communication platforms, subscription services, cloud storage and digital media libraries (photos, documents, e-books), and any digital assets with monetary value such as cryptocurrency, domain names, or monetized content channels.
Social Media and Memorial Accounts
Major platforms have established policies for handling deceased users' accounts. Facebook allows users to designate a Legacy Contact who can manage their memorialized account. Instagram and Twitter (now X) have similar memorialization and deletion request processes, though the specifics vary by platform.
Consider documenting your preference: would you like your accounts to be memorialized as a place for people to remember you, or deleted? Communicating these wishes in your estate documents — and designating someone with the legal standing and technical access to carry them out — makes a significant difference.
Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets of Value
Cryptocurrency is one of the most challenging digital asset categories because access depends entirely on possession of private keys or seed phrases. Unlike a bank account, there is no customer service line to call and no probate court order that can unlock a cold wallet.
If you hold cryptocurrency, document your wallet addresses, the exchanges where you hold assets, and how to access your seed phrases or private keys in a secure but retrievable way. Hardware wallets should be physically stored in a location that your fiduciary can access. Consider using a multi-signature wallet setup that requires multiple parties to authorize transactions — this adds both security and a succession mechanism.
NFTs, gaming assets, and domain names each have their own transfer mechanics. For assets of significant value, consult a specialist who can help you structure the transfer process before it becomes an estate issue.
Starting the Conversation
Talking about death is uncomfortable. Talking about passwords and cryptocurrency wallets in the same conversation as funeral preferences feels strange. But the families who navigate post-loss administration most smoothly are typically those where the deceased had documented their wishes and their accounts.
The digital legacy conversation does not need to be a formal estate planning session — it can start with a shared document and a conversation about what you would want. The point is to make sure that the people you leave behind can access what they need, honor your wishes for your accounts, and not spend months guessing or grieving over inaccessible assets.
Marcus Webb
Operations Analyst, BenTrustCo
