A generation ago, an Executor’s first task was to go through a filing cabinet. Bank statements, share certificates, insurance policies and title deeds were physical objects, and finding them was mostly a question of patience.
Today a substantial part of the average estate exists only as a login. Some of it is valuable in the obvious sense, such as cryptocurrency or an online business. Some of it is valuable only to the family, such as twenty years of photographs. Almost all of it is protected by security measures specifically designed to stop anyone other than the account holder getting in — including, as it turns out, the person legally entitled to.
What actually counts as a digital asset
It is a broader category than most people assume, and it helps to separate it into four groups.
Assets with real financial value. Cryptocurrency holdings, online trading accounts, domain names, monetised social media or YouTube channels, e-commerce shops, and money sitting in payment platforms such as PayPal or Stripe.
Assets with contractual value. Air miles, loyalty points, credit balances with online retailers, and subscription services paid annually in advance.
Assets with sentimental value. Photograph libraries, cloud storage, email archives, and social media accounts that amount to a record of someone’s life.
Assets that are really licences. Music, film and e-book collections. This surprises people. A large digital library that cost thousands of pounds is generally a personal, non-transferable licence to access content. It usually dies with the account holder and cannot be left to anyone.
The access problem
Three obstacles sit between an Executor and a digital asset.
The first is knowing it exists. There is no statement in the post for a crypto wallet. Families frequently discover holdings by accident, and it is reasonable to assume that some are never discovered at all.
The second is the platform’s terms of service. Most providers prohibit sharing credentials and many close accounts on notification of death rather than transferring them. Providers based overseas may not respond to an English grant of probate in the way a domestic bank would.
The third is the law on unauthorised access. Using someone else’s password, even with the best intentions and even as their Executor, sits awkwardly with the Computer Misuse Act 1990. In practice, families do it constantly. That does not make it the safe route, particularly for an Executor who may later have to justify their administration of the estate.
Cryptocurrency deserves its own warning. If nobody knows the seed phrase, the asset is gone. Not frozen, not delayed — gone, permanently, with no institution to appeal to. Estates have unquestionably lost six-figure sums this way.
What the platforms allow
The larger providers have built their own processes, and they are worth using because they operate faster than any legal route.
Apple offers a Legacy Contact, allowing named people to request access to an account after death with an access key. Google has Inactive Account Manager, which can pass on data or delete an account after a set period of inactivity. Facebook allows an account to be memorialised or deleted and permits a legacy contact. Microsoft, by contrast, offers relatively little and generally closes accounts.
Each of these is set up in a few minutes by the account holder while alive. None can be set up afterwards. That asymmetry is the whole point.
Practical steps that work
Make an inventory, and keep it separate from your Will. A Will becomes a public document once probate is granted. Passwords must never appear in it. What belongs in the Will is authority; what belongs in a separate, secure document is detail.
Use a password manager and record how to reach it. A single master credential, held securely and known to one trusted person or lodged with your solicitor, solves most of the practical problem in one move. Several managers now include their own emergency access features.
Give your Executor explicit authority. Modern Wills should contain a clause authorising Executors to access, manage, transfer and close digital accounts. It does not override a platform’s terms, but it establishes intention, which matters when dealing with providers and with beneficiaries.
Treat cryptocurrency as a special case. Record where the wallet is, what type it is, and how the seed phrase can be reached — never all in the same place, and never in the Will itself. Some families split a phrase between two trusted people. Some use a bank safe deposit. What does not work is assuming someone will find it.
Say what should happen, not just who gets what. Should social media accounts be memorialised or deleted? Should the email archive be read or destroyed? Executors are often left guessing at genuinely personal questions, and the answers take one line to record.
The wider point
Digital assets sit in an area where the law is still catching up with how people actually live. The Law Commission has been considering how digital assets fit within property law, and the direction of travel is towards clearer recognition. That will help future estates. It does not help an Executor today who is looking at an account they cannot open.
The remedy is unglamorous and entirely within your control: an inventory, a secure route to the credentials, a clause in your Will, and platform tools switched on in advance. An hour spent now saves your family the peculiar frustration of knowing exactly where something is and being unable to reach it.