Estates used to be found in a filing cabinet. A great deal of the modern estate exists only as a login, protected by security designed to keep everyone out — including the Executor who is legally entitled to deal with it.
Digital assets fall into four groups. Things with financial value (cryptocurrency, domain names, online shops, monetised channels, balances in payment platforms). Things with contractual value (air miles, loyalty points, prepaid subscriptions). Things with sentimental value (photographs, cloud storage, email archives). And things that are really only licences — digital music, film and e-book collections are usually personal and non-transferable, so a library that cost thousands cannot be left to anyone.
Three obstacles block access. Knowing the asset exists at all, since nothing arrives in the post for a crypto wallet. The platform’s terms, which often close accounts on death rather than transferring them and may ignore an English grant of probate if the provider is overseas. And the Computer Misuse Act 1990, which sits awkwardly with using someone else’s password however good the intentions.
Cryptocurrency is the sharpest case. No seed phrase means the asset is gone permanently. There is no institution to appeal to and no process for recovery.
The platforms offer tools, but only in advance. Apple has a Legacy Contact. Google has Inactive Account Manager. Facebook allows memorialisation and a legacy contact. Each takes minutes to set up while alive and cannot be arranged afterwards.
Five practical steps: keep an inventory of accounts stored separately from your Will, because a Will becomes public after probate and must never contain passwords; use a password manager and make sure one trusted person can reach the master credential; include a clause in your Will giving Executors explicit authority over digital accounts; treat crypto seed phrases as a distinct problem with a deliberate, secure solution; and record what you actually want to happen to social media and email archives, so your Executor is not guessing.
The law is still catching up with how people live online. Your Executor’s problem, though, is immediate — and an hour’s preparation now removes almost all of it.