Digital assets and your estate: crypto keys, online accounts, and the law in seven countries
What counts as a digital asset, who can reach it after you die, why crypto is the hardest case, and the one-page inventory that saves an executor a month.
General information, not advice.
What counts?
Anything of value or meaning that lives behind a login: bank and brokerage logins, cryptocurrency, domain names, a business's cloud, the photo library, the email account that resets everything else, social accounts, loyalty points (airline miles are usually non-transferable by their terms and transferred anyway on request), subscriptions that keep billing, and the recordings that make a Personal AI Twin. Some are property (crypto, domains, the files), some are licences that die with you (most streaming and software accounts, under their terms), and the difference is decided by the platform's terms and the law where you live. An average adult has more than a hundred password-protected accounts, and an executor with no list finds about a third of them.
The law by country
Country | The position |
|---|---|
United States | All but a handful of states have adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (2015): an executor can access the catalogue of digital assets (which accounts exist, with whom) under the general authority of the will, and the content of communications only with the user's express consent in the will, a trust or the platform's own online tool, which takes priority over the will. |
United Kingdom | The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 recognises digital assets, including crypto tokens, as a third category of personal property that can be owned, inherited and held on trust; access still runs through platform terms and the executor's grant, and the Law Commission has recommended a statutory right of access that has not yet been legislated. |
Australia | No national fiduciary-access law; the New South Wales Law Reform Commission recommended one in 2019 and no state has acted; executors rely on platform legacy tools, the asset record, and letters with the grant, and the Privacy Act does not protect the deceased. |
Canada | Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island have enacted the Uniform Access to Digital Assets by Fiduciaries Act, giving executors a right of access subject to the will; elsewhere as Australia. |
Israel, Singapore | No specific statute; platform terms and the executor's general authority under the inheritance order or grant; Singapore's PDPA disclosure rules continue for ten years after death. |
EU | National law; Germany's Federal Court of Justice ruled in 2018 (the Facebook case, III ZR 183/17) that heirs inherit a social media account and its contents like letters and diaries; France's 2016 Digital Republic law lets a person leave directives about their data after death and the heirs exercise the rights otherwise; the GDPR does not protect the dead, though member states may. |
Crypto and the key problem
A cryptocurrency wallet is controlled by whoever holds the private key, and by no one else, ever. There is no issuer to write to and no court that can order a chain to pay; an estimated fifth of all bitcoin is already lost, much of it to death. Exchange-held crypto is easier: Coinbase, Kraken and the licensed exchanges have deceased-account processes that work with a grant and a death certificate. Self-custodied crypto passes only if the keys pass. The answers are a hardware wallet with the seed phrase written on metal in a place the executor can reach (a safe deposit box the executor can open, a lawyer's safe, split between two people), a multi-signature arrangement where two of three keys are needed and the executor holds one, a custodian for larger holdings, or an inheritance service that releases keys on proof of death; and a line in the asset record that says which, without the key itself. Tax follows the country: a deemed disposition at death in Canada, a step-up in the United States, the deceased's cost base in Australia.
What the platforms allow
Apple's Legacy Contact (iOS 15 and later) gives a named person access to iCloud data with an access key and a death certificate; Google's Inactive Account Manager hands chosen data to chosen people after a period of inactivity you set; Meta's legacy contact can memorialise a Facebook or Instagram account and download what you allowed, and a memorialised account cannot be logged into; Microsoft, X and LinkedIn work from a next-of-kin process with a death certificate. Set them, and note them in the record. Everything else runs on the executor's letter and the platform's patience, and a password manager with an emergency-access feature (1Password, Bitwarden and others offer one) is the practical answer for the hundred accounts nobody will write to.
The inventory and the digital executor
One page: every account, what it holds, how it is reached (never the password itself; where the password is, which is usually the password manager and its emergency access), and who should have it. Say which accounts should be closed, which memorialised, which handed on, and which deleted unread. Name a digital executor if the main executor is not the person for it; a will can appoint one for that purpose in most countries and the appointment is respected by the platforms that have a process. Update it when the phone changes, because the phone is the key to everything else, and the phone's passcode is the one item most families cannot get past.
Digital inventory, one line per account.
Account: [ ]. What it holds: [money / photos / documents / the business / social]. Reached by: [password manager entry / legacy contact set / hardware wallet, seed in [place]]. On my death: [close / memorialise / hand to [name] / delete unread]. Who: [ ].
Frequently asked
Can my executor access my email after I die?+
In most US states if your will or the platform's tool allows it; elsewhere it depends on the platform's terms and the executor's authority. Set the platform's legacy tool and say so in the record.
What happens to crypto when someone dies?+
Whoever holds the private key controls it. Without the key it is lost. Plan the key's handover.
Are digital assets property in the UK?+
Yes, under the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, which recognises a third category of personal property.
Should I put my passwords in my will?+
No. A will becomes a public document in many countries. Put them in a password manager with emergency access, and put the location in the inventory.
What is a digital executor?+
A person named in the will to deal with digital accounts and assets, separately from or alongside the main executor.
Record the part the documents cannot hold
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