Digital assets in your will

Everyone has digital assets and almost no one's will mentions them. Your email account, your photo library, your financial logins, your domain names, your social media, your crypto, your Substack subscribers, your password manager itself — all of it is part of your estate, all of it has terms-of-service agreements that don't automatically defer to your executor, and all of it is at risk of being lost or locked permanently if you don't plan for it.

Why a generic will doesn't reach your accounts

By default, terms-of-service agreements with platforms (Google, Apple, Meta, Coinbase) say that you and only you are authorized to access the account. When you die, the platform's policy kicks in — and the policy varies wildly. Google has Inactive Account Manager. Apple has Digital Legacy Contact. Meta has Memorialization. Coinbase has its own beneficiary process. Most others have nothing, and the platform can lawfully refuse access to your executor even with letters testamentary.

The legal lever is RUFADAA — the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, adopted by most U.S. states. RUFADAA gives an executor the right to access your digital assets, but only if you authorized it. There are three levels:

1. You used the platform's online tool (Google Inactive Account Manager, Apple Legacy Contact, Facebook Memorialization). This is the strongest authorization and overrides whatever's in your will. Use these tools where they exist.
2. Your will explicitly authorizes access to digital assets including the content of communications. Without this language, your executor can typically get only "catalog" information — the to/from of emails, the names of files — but not content.
3. Nothing in writing. Default kicks in. The platform decides.

The Trustwise will template includes RUFADAA-compliant language by default, so your executor gets the maximum access RUFADAA allows.

Inventory matters more than authorization

Authorization alone isn't enough — your executor also has to know what accounts you have. The number of accounts the average person has accumulated by age 40 is in the hundreds. Most are forgotten. Some hold real money or sentimental value (the Dropbox folder with twenty years of photos, the cloud backup of your kid's first videos).

A few minutes spent listing your major accounts is the most important thing you can do. The list doesn't go in the will (wills are public after probate). It goes in a "letter of instruction" or password manager handoff that the executor can find.

A reasonable starter list:

• Primary email (Gmail / Outlook / iCloud)
• Password manager (1Password / Bitwarden / Dashlane)
• Financial logins (banks, brokerages, retirement accounts, crypto exchanges)
• Cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive)
• Social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X/Twitter)
• Photo libraries (Apple Photos, Google Photos, Flickr)
• Domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap)
• Web hosting (where you have a website)
• Online businesses (Etsy, eBay, Shopify, Substack)
• Subscriptions to track and cancel (Netflix, NYT, gym, software)

The single most useful artifact is a current password manager export, accessible to your executor through the password manager's emergency-access feature. That feature lets you designate someone who can request emergency access — and after a waiting period (typically 7 days), they get full access to your vault if you don't deny the request.

Cryptocurrency: a special case

Crypto held on an exchange (Coinbase, Kraken) follows the same RUFADAA logic as any other account. Crypto held in a self-custody wallet (Ledger, MetaMask, paper wallet) is different. There's no platform to ask. Without the seed phrase or private key, the assets are irretrievable. Period.

Standard crypto handoff structures:

• Seed phrase split + recovery instructions. Some people split the 12- or 24-word seed phrase across two physically separate locations (a safe deposit box and a home safe), with a letter explaining how the executor reassembles it.
• Multi-sig wallets with one key held by a trusted person.
• Inheritance services (Casa, others) that hold a recovery key for designated beneficiaries.

This is one place where a beneficiary form doesn't exist. The will can direct the crypto, but the executor needs the access information. If you have meaningful crypto holdings, plan for it specifically. People have lost millions of dollars in crypto by dying without a recovery plan.

Sentimental digital assets

The financial accounts are the urgent ones because they have real-world consequences. The sentimental ones — photos, videos, written archives, voice memos — are the ones survivors regret losing most.

A few things to know:

• Apple Legacy Contact is the cleanest tool for iPhone users. The contact gets a key that, combined with your death certificate, unlocks your iCloud account.
• Google Inactive Account Manager lets you designate up to 10 contacts who get access if your account is inactive for a configurable period (3-18 months).
• Photo libraries on physical devices (a hard drive in your closet) require knowing your computer's password and the disk encryption key. FileVault and BitLocker recovery keys should be in your password manager.

What goes in the will, what doesn't

In the will:

• Explicit authorization to access digital assets including the content of communications, under RUFADAA
• Direction about specific high-value digital assets (the domain name your business runs on, the Substack with paying subscribers, the YouTube channel with monetization)
• Disposition of crypto holdings (to whom, in what shares)

Outside the will (and updated more frequently):

• Inventory of accounts
• Letter of instruction telling the executor where to find passwords and recovery keys
• Password manager emergency-access setup

Wills are public after probate. You don't want your password manager master password in a public document. You want it in a sealed envelope or password-manager emergency-access flow that the executor can use without anyone else seeing it.

What to do this week

A 30-minute version of digital-asset planning:

1. Set up Apple Legacy Contact and/or Google Inactive Account Manager for your primary accounts.
2. Set up emergency access on your password manager for one trusted person.
3. List your top five "if I died, this matters" accounts on a piece of paper. Put it where your executor will find it.
4. If you have meaningful crypto, write down where the recovery information is and how the executor would access it.
5. Make sure your will has digital-asset authorization language. (Trustwise wills do by default.)

The dirty secret of digital estate planning is that 95% of it is just inventory. The legal authorization in the will is the easy part. The hard part is making sure your executor knows what accounts you have and how to reach them.