Your digital legacy is larger than you think — and harder to protect
Digital assets, from cryptocurrency wallets and AI-generated content to social media profiles, photo archives, and entire online businesses could be lost forever when you die if you don’t plan ahead.
Part of our wealth management practice deals extensively with helping clients plan for the distribution of assets after their death. Most people think of this in terms of tangible assets: real estate, financial accounts, jewelry, artwork, antiques and family heirlooms, and other items of value. But now the digital side of your estate may be just as valuable and far more complex to manage than your physical one. Online accounts can also be a source of risk for your estate and loved ones if cybercriminals get ahold of your abandoned digital accounts. Nearly everyone is online, yet few of us have enough knowledge of digital estate planning to protect our assets and our heirs.
The issue has evolved dramatically, and I sat down with Joe Oleksak, a partner on Plante Moran's cybersecurity consulting team, to talk about the changes in digital legacy planning and what you need to do about it now.
What are digital assets?
The things that come to mind for most people are still financial accounts, such as online banking and brokerage accounts and payment apps like Venmo, PayPal, and Zelle. But the financial picture has gotten more complex. Cryptocurrency holdings, whether they’re sitting on an exchange like Coinbase or locked in a personal hardware wallet, represent real monetary value. Unlike a traditional bank account, if no one has your private keys or seed phrases, cryptocurrency assets are permanently and irreversibly gone. The same goes for NFTs, tokenized property, and other blockchain-based assets that don't have a customer service number to call.
Then there’s a category that barely existed a few years ago: online businesses and revenue streams. If you run an Etsy shop, monetize a YouTube channel, earn through a Patreon page, or generate affiliate income, you have assets with ongoing financial value that someone needs to know about in order to manage them or wind down.
What people still tend to overlook, though, are the things that carry enormous sentimental value: digital photo libraries, email archives, blogs, social media profiles, music playlists, and cloud-stored documents. These may not have a dollar sign attached to them, but they’re irreplaceable records of a life lived. With the rise of AI tools, many people are creating content — writing, art, music, even business automations — that may have both personal and commercial significance.
Finally, think about the things quietly running in the background: digital subscriptions and subscription services racking up monthly charges, loyalty programs with transferable value, smart home devices tied to your accounts, and domain names or websites you’ve registered over the years.
In short, the list of digital assets is long and not exhaustive:
- Online banking, brokerage, and retirement accounts
- Funds in payment apps like Venmo, PayPal, and Zelle
- Cryptocurrency holdings
- Online businesses and revenue streams like Etsy shops, YouTube channels, Patreon pages, and other affiliate accounts
- Digital photo libraries, email archives, blogs, social media profiles, music playlists, cloud-stored documents and videos
- AI-generated content, including agentic workflows and automations
- Digital subscriptions and subscription services
- Domain names and websites
None of these announce themselves after you’re gone — and that’s exactly the problem. You have to include them in your estate planning.
How can you protect digital assets — and transfer them when the time comes?
Protecting your privacy online and keeping your electronic information out of the wrong hands is always critical, regardless of your age, experience, or financial circumstances — the less shared the better. However, when it comes to digital estate planning, the more information you provide your family, heirs, trustee, or personal representative, the easier it is to resolve your estate if you die or become incapacitated. Balancing these two goals can be challenging, but Joe has some general suggestions to help you give your family a roadmap without opening yourself up to too much risk.
1. Share carefully
The instinct when you start thinking about estate planning for your digital assets is to just hand your spouse or your kid a list of passwords and call it done. Resist that urge. Identity theft originating from family members is still one of the most common forms of fraud, and even well-meaning family members can misplace a piece of paper or get phished by someone who knows just enough to be convincing. (More about safe password storage below.)
The bigger issue though is that simply sharing a password doesn’t get someone very far anymore. Most accounts worth protecting require multifactor authentication. Even if your daughter has your login credentials, she still needs access to your phone, your authenticator app, or your biometrics.
Think through the full chain of access, mentally walk through how a family member would access each account. Otherwise, just sharing a password gives your family a false sense of security and you a false sense of planning. Your goal shouldn’t be to share less or share more; it’s to share more prudently — through the right channels, with the right people, with the right information so that they have access if/when they need it.
2. Designate legacy contacts and select a “digital fiduciary”
The single most important thing you can do is decide who you trust to manage your digital life when you can’t, and then make that designation in a way that holds up in practice.
Start with the tools the major platforms already give you, because under the law, these carry the most weight. Apple lets you name up to five legacy contacts who can access your iCloud data using a secure access key: photos, notes, email, messages, health data. Google’s Inactive Account Manager lets you choose how long your account should sit idle before notifying up to 10 people you’ve designated, and you pick exactly which data they can download. Meta lets you assign a legacy contact who can memorialize or delete your Facebook and Instagram profiles.
Understand that platform tools only cover the platforms themselves. For everything else like the crypto wallet, the Etsy shop, the domain names, the password manager vault, you need a designated person. Think of this as your “digital executor.” This should be someone named in your will or trust with explicit authority to access, manage, transfer, or close your digital accounts. Ideally, it’s someone who’s at least reasonably comfortable with technology, because administering a cryptocurrency wallet or navigating multifactor authentication isn’t intuitive. If your professional trustee or personal representative isn’t particularly tech-savvy, consider naming a separate individual for the digital side who can access when needed.
If you don’t make these designations yourself, your family is left fighting platform terms of service and federal privacy law to log into your accounts. In many cases, they’ll only be able to delete accounts, not access what’s inside them.
3. Take inventory of your digital assets
This sounds simple, but it’s where most people fall short. Your fiduciary needs are a map: here’s what exists, here’s where it lives, and here’s how to get in when the time comes. Think through your digital life from end to end and write it all down somewhere your executor or trustee can get to it.
Financial accounts are the most urgent: banking, brokerage, payment apps, and especially cryptocurrency. Next, think about accounts that generate income as well as email accounts, cloud storage, social media profiles, photo libraries, subscriptions that are quietly billing your credit card every month, domain names, loyalty programs, and smart devices tied to your identity.
Account names and locations go into the inventory. Passwords and credentials go somewhere separate and secure like a fireproof safe, a bank safe deposit box, or a modern password manager that offers emergency access features for a designated contact.
Review the inventory at least once a year and update it anytime you open a new account or close an old one. It’s a small habit that could save your family months of frustration, or worse, the permanent loss of digital assets, be they financial or sentimental.
4. Lock up your passwords
A few years ago, the advice was straightforward: Write down your passwords and lock them in a safe. That’s still not a bad idea for certain things, but reality is that passwords are becoming obsolete. Passkeys — the new authentication standard backed by Apple, Google, and Microsoft — use your biometrics instead of a typed password. There’s nothing to write down because the private key never leaves your device. Passkeys are a huge leap forward for security, but they create a real challenge for estate planning.
This is why the platform legacy tools we talked about earlier matter so much. For passkey-protected accounts, these legacy contact designations may be the only way someone can get in after you’re gone.
For other platforms, a modern password manager is your best friend. Tools like 1Password and NordPass now offer emergency access features that let a designated contact request your vault. If you don’t respond within a set waiting period, the vault unlocks for them. It’s far more secure than a sticky note, far more practical than memorizing dozens of complex passwords, and it solves the handoff problem in one step.
The one exception is cryptocurrency. Seed phrases and hardware wallet PINs should always be stored physically, in a fireproof safe or a bank safe deposit box, never digitally in plain text. Lose those, and no password manager in the world can get your assets back.
5. Consider AI and your digital afterlife
This part of the digital estate planning conversation didn’t exist a few years ago, and it’s evolving fast. “Grief tech” companies now offer AI-generated replicas of the deceased based on the person’s images, social media posts, messages, and voice recordings. Whether you find that comforting or unsettling, it raises an important question: Do you want your digital likeness used that way, and if so, by whom?
Beyond the philosophical, there are practical considerations. If you’ve used AI tools to create original content like writing, artwork, music, or business automations, they may have real commercial and sentimental value. Someone needs to know it exists, where it lives, and what you’d like done with it. The same goes for any AI-automated or agentic processes tied to your accounts, like trading algorithms or customer service bots, that don’t just stop running because you’re no longer around.
The law hasn’t fully caught up here, and that’s exactly the point. If you wait for clear legal guidance before addressing these questions in your estate plan, you may be waiting a long time. Better to have the conversation with your estate attorney and your cybersecurity advisor now.
What can I do if I think a recently deceased loved one had undisclosed assets?
If the person who passed didn’t leave you a roadmap, don’t panic. Start by checking whether they set up any platform legacy tools. Apple, Google, and Meta all have dedicated processes for handling requests from verified family members or legal representatives. You may find the person designated someone without mentioning it.
Beyond that, the best detective work is often the simplest. Watch the mail and email for statements from financial institutions and crypto exchanges, and look for recurring or subscription charges on credit card statements. If you have access to the person’s devices, look through browser history, bookmarks, and app libraries. For anything you can’t access directly, most major platforms have formal processes for executors. You’ll typically need a death certificate, proof of your legal authority, and a government-issued ID.
If cryptocurrency is involved in a loved one’s estate, consider bringing in a forensic blockchain specialist. On-chain transactions leave a trail, and a professional can help trace wallet addresses and identify holdings that might otherwise disappear.
It’s a frustrating process, and there’s no sugarcoating it, bringing us back to the whole point of estate planning for your digital assets: Don’t leave your family guessing.
