Billions of dollars in cryptocurrency sit permanently inaccessible because their owners died without leaving access information. Social media accounts linger indefinitely without a legacy plan. Online businesses, digital storefronts, and subscription revenue streams evaporate when operators die without preparing their heirs. Email archives containing decades of personal history become locked forever.
Digital assets are now a significant — sometimes the most significant — component of many people's estates. Yet the vast majority of Americans have done nothing to plan for what happens to their digital lives when they die.
This guide covers everything you need to include digital assets in your estate plan: the types of digital assets you may own, how to handle cryptocurrency specifically, how to address online accounts, what a digital executor does, and the practical steps to protect what you've built in the digital world.
The category is broader than most people realize:
Cryptocurrency deserves special attention because its technical characteristics make it uniquely vulnerable to permanent loss at death.
Traditional assets — bank accounts, stocks, real estate — have institutional owners (banks, brokerages, title companies) that maintain records and have procedures for transferring assets to heirs. A court order can compel a bank to release funds. There's a paper trail. There's someone to call.
Self-custodied cryptocurrency has none of this. Your Bitcoin or Ethereum exists on the blockchain, secured by cryptographic private keys that you alone control. If you don't leave those keys to your heirs:
The cryptocurrency is gone. Permanently. Forever. There is no Coinbase customer service, no court order, and no technology that can recover cryptocurrency from a wallet without the private key or seed phrase. Crypto experts estimate that 3–4 million Bitcoin — worth tens of billions of dollars — has been permanently lost due to lost or forgotten access credentials.
Cryptocurrency held on a centralized exchange is more recoverable than self-custodied crypto, but requires planning. Most major exchanges now have formal deceased account processes that allow heirs to claim assets with proper documentation (death certificate, proof of identity, sometimes a court order). However, this process can take months and may require probate or trust documentation.
For exchange-held crypto: name your trust as the beneficiary if the exchange allows it, or document account credentials (not necessarily passwords — just enough information for heirs to begin the recovery process) in a secure location.
For Bitcoin or other crypto held in hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor) or software wallets, access depends entirely on the seed phrase — typically a 12 or 24-word recovery phrase generated when the wallet was created. Anyone with the seed phrase can access the wallet from any device. Anyone without it cannot.
Your estate plan must include a mechanism to pass your seed phrase to a trusted heir. Options include:
Never write your seed phrase in your will or trust document. Wills often become public record during probate. Trust certifications may be shown to third parties. A seed phrase in a public document is a theft waiting to happen.
Your trust or will should explicitly:
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) present similar access challenges to cryptocurrency — they're held in crypto wallets secured by the same private keys and seed phrases. Additionally, NFTs raise unique questions:
For estate planning purposes, treat NFTs like cryptocurrency — secure the wallet access credentials, document them separately, and authorize your trustee explicitly to deal with digital collectibles.
The RUFADAA (Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act) has been adopted by most U.S. states and provides a legal framework for fiduciary access to digital accounts. But the law defers to platform terms of service — meaning what your executor can actually access depends significantly on what each platform allows and what you've set up in advance.
| Platform | Legacy Feature | What It Does |
|---|---|---|
| Inactive Account Manager | Designate a trusted contact to download your data or delete your account after a period of inactivity | |
| Apple | Digital Legacy | Add Legacy Contacts who can access your iCloud data (photos, documents, messages) with a death certificate |
| Facebook/Meta | Legacy Contact | Designate someone to manage your memorialized account; can also request account deletion |
| Memorialization | Account can be memorialized; loved ones can request it with proof of death | |
| X (Twitter) | Deactivation request | Immediate family members can request account deactivation; no account transfer or memorialization |
| Profile removal | Family can request profile removal; no legacy or transfer feature | |
| YouTube | Via Google's Inactive Account Manager | Channels with monetization can designate access through Google's legacy feature |
Setting up legacy contacts or inactive account settings on every major platform takes less than an hour and could save your family enormous frustration and potential legal fees trying to access your accounts later.
Email accounts often contain irreplaceable personal and financial information. For many people, decades of correspondence, tax documents, contracts, and receipts live in email. Similarly, cloud storage (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive) may hold important documents that your executor needs to administer your estate.
Steps to take:
If you own a website, blog, e-commerce store, or any online business, those assets may have significant value and require specific planning:
Domain names are registered through registrars (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, etc.). Domain registrar accounts must be accessible to your executor. Without account access, domain names may lapse after your death, potentially allowing others to register them. Document registrar account information and consider registrar lock settings that prevent unauthorized transfers.
Hosting accounts (hosting login, server access, CMS login), associated revenue accounts (Google AdSense, affiliate networks), and any associated payment processing accounts (PayPal, Stripe) all need to be documented. A successor operator — whether a family member, business partner, or buyer — will need all of this to either continue or wind down the business.
Monetized YouTube channels, affiliate marketing accounts, and similar income-generating platforms often have pending revenue that can be claimed by your estate. Document these accounts and ensure your executor knows they exist.
A digital executor is someone designated specifically to handle your digital assets and online accounts. While this isn't a legally separate role from your regular executor in most states, designating one person (or the same person explicitly tasked with digital assets) ensures someone knows where to start, has the necessary technical knowledge, and has clear authority to act.
Your digital executor should:
Choose someone who is technically comfortable, trustworthy, and available. A tech-savvy adult child or trusted friend often works better than an elderly spouse who may not know how to navigate cryptocurrency exchanges or request account data downloads.
The most practical thing you can do today is create a digital asset inventory — a comprehensive document listing all your digital assets and the information needed to access them. This is not your will or trust; it's a private reference document for your executor.
Your digital asset inventory should include:
Never store passwords, seed phrases, or sensitive credentials in your will, trust document, or any document that may become public record during probate. Store them in a separate, secure document that references your estate plan — not inside it.
The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) has been adopted by 47 states as of 2026. It establishes that fiduciaries (executors, trustees, agents under power of attorney) have legal authority to access digital assets — but it prioritizes any instructions the account holder left on the platform itself (like Facebook's Legacy Contact) over the fiduciary's general authority.
Practical takeaway: RUFADAA gives your executor legal standing to access digital accounts, but platform legacy features are more effective in practice. Use both: authorize your executor explicitly in your trust or will, AND set up legacy features on all major platforms.
Your trust or will should include specific language authorizing your trustee or executor to:
Many older trust documents don't include this language because digital assets didn't exist when they were drafted. If your trust is more than 5 years old, consider having an attorney review it to add digital asset provisions. See our guide on when to update your trust for more on this.
Cryptocurrency and NFTs are treated as property by the IRS. This has several estate planning implications:
Work with a CPA experienced in cryptocurrency taxation when planning for significant digital asset holdings.
Trust & Will helps you create a complete estate plan — including provisions for digital assets, customizable executor powers, and clear beneficiary designations. Get started today.
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