Your Digital Estate: Sorting Out Online Accounts, Photos and Cryptocurrency After a Death

When someone dies, their executors traditionally knew what to do: find the will, secure the house, notify the banks, gather the paperwork. Today, an estate is just as likely to include a Bitcoin wallet, fifteen years of photographs stored in the cloud, a small business Instagram account and a tangle of streaming subscriptions. None of it sits in a filing cabinet, and none of it comes with a key.

At Alan Curtis Legal, we increasingly advise families who are surprised to discover how difficult it is to deal with a loved one's digital life — and how much easier matters become with a little forward planning.

What Exactly Is a Digital Asset?

The phrase covers more than most people expect. It includes:

• Online bank and building society accounts, including app-only providers such as Monzo or Starling
• Cryptocurrency holdings and the wallets or exchange accounts that hold them
• Social media profiles, email accounts and messaging services
• Cloud storage and photo libraries
• Domain names, websites and online businesses
• Digital purchases — ebooks, music, films — and subscription services
• Loyalty points, vouchers and PayPal balances

Some of these have obvious monetary value. Others are valuable only for what they contain: letters, photographs, a record of a life.

The Legal Grey Area

English law does not have a dedicated statute governing digital assets after death. Executors' authority comes from the grant of probate, and in principle that authority extends to digital property. In practice, the position is muddied by two things.

First, ownership is often unclear. When you buy an ebook or set up an email account, you usually acquire a licence, not the asset itself. Those licences are personal to you and typically end on death — meaning the provider may be entitled to close the account rather than hand it over.

Second, platform terms of service vary enormously. Some, such as Google, offer 'inactive account manager' settings that let you nominate who should be contacted. Apple allows a 'Legacy Contact' to access certain data. Facebook permits the appointment of a 'legacy contact' or memorialisation of a profile. Others offer nothing at all, and data protection rules can make providers cautious about releasing content even to a personal representative.

Cryptocurrency is a category of its own. If the private keys are lost, the assets are, as a practical matter, unrecoverable — the blockchain recognises the holder, not the heir. There is no customer service department to write to.

Why Executors Struggle

An executor who cannot find account information faces a slow, frustrating process: writing to providers, supplying grant of probate and death certificates, and hoping the platform's policy allows disclosure. Meanwhile, accounts may keep charging subscription fees, or — worse — sit unmonitored and vulnerable to fraud. Deceased persons' identities are a known target for criminals.

There is also a risk of oversharing. Some families circulate passwords freely, but an executor accessing an account without proper authority can find themselves in a difficult legal position, particularly where content belongs partly to other people (messages in a group chat, for instance).

What Your Will Should Say

A well-drafted will can make a real difference. We typically recommend that it:

• Expressly grants executors authority over digital assets and account information
• Deals with what should happen to specific accounts — closure, transfer or preservation
• Distinguishes between assets of financial value and those of sentimental value

What a will should not do is list your passwords. A will eventually becomes a public document on request, and publishing login credentials is neither secure nor sensible. Nor should it name specific services that may have changed by the time it takes effect.

The Letter of Wishes: Your Practical Toolkit

The practical solution is a separate, confidential document — often called a letter of wishes or digital asset register. Keep it alongside your will (not inside it) and record:

• A list of accounts and devices
• Where credentials or recovery information can be found — for example, within a password manager whose master password you share with a trusted person
• Your wishes for each account: delete, memorialise, download, transfer
• Details of any cryptocurrency holdings, wallets and where the keys or seed phrases are stored

A reputable password manager is worth its weight in gold here. It means you need only pass on one secure credential rather than a notebook full of logins that will be out of date within months.

Five Steps to Take Now

1. Take inventory. List your significant accounts and digital holdings.
2. Use platform tools. Set up Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's inactive account settings, or equivalent features.
3. Choose your digital executor. Consider appointing someone comfortable with technology among your executors.
4. Write the letter of wishes. Review it annually, just as you would your will.
5. Review your will. If it was drafted some years ago, it almost certainly says nothing about digital assets.

Planning With Confidence

Death is a subject most of us avoid, but the digital world has a way of forcing the issue — subscriptions that keep billing, profiles that linger, savings that vanish with a forgotten password. A short conversation with a solicitor, and an hour spent organising your accounts, can spare your family months of difficulty.

If you would like help updating your will to cover your digital estate, or advice as an executor navigating these issues, Alan Curtis Legal is here to help — in plain English, without the jargon.