Digital accounts rarely pass to a family the way possessions do

Two separate questions, constantly merged

When someone dies, their online life raises two distinct problems that families collapse into one. The first is entitlement: who is legally entitled to whatever the account represents. The second is access: who can actually get into it. These have different answers, and the second is usually the harder of the two.

A bank account raises no such confusion, because banking systems have handled death for centuries and have processes for it. Consumer technology services are newer, are frequently governed by terms drafted in another jurisdiction, and were designed around the assumption that an account belongs to one living person who logs in. The result is a mismatch between succession law and the way the systems actually behave.

A licence usually ends with the person

Much of what looks like a digital library is a personal permission rather than property. Purchased films, music, books and game libraries are commonly licensed to an individual on terms that are non-transferable, which means there may be nothing to inherit however substantial the collection appears and however much was spent building it.

Providers vary in how they handle this in practice, and some have introduced family sharing or legacy arrangements that soften the position. But the legal starting point in many cases is that the entitlement was personal. Families find this genuinely shocking, and the reaction is understandable: the purchases felt like buying, the interface said buy, and the outcome resembles renting.

Some digital property is real property

Not everything falls into that category. A domain name, a monetised channel with income attached, a business account, cryptocurrency holdings, intellectual property in photographs or writing, and loyalty balances in some schemes can all carry genuine value and can form part of an estate.

Cryptocurrency is the sharpest example of the access problem. Where holdings are self-custodied, the private keys are the asset in every practical sense, and an estate that cannot locate them may be unable to recover anything at all despite unquestionable entitlement. No court order compels a blockchain. That is an unusual situation in succession law and it has produced real and permanent losses.

Providers have processes, and they are not fast

Most large services now have a bereavement route, typically allowing an account to be closed or memorialised, and sometimes allowing limited material to be released to a verified representative. These processes require documentation, take time, and are administered under the provider’s own policy rather than under the family’s local succession law.

What they usually will not do is hand over login credentials, and that is deliberate. Releasing access to a whole account exposes the private correspondence of everyone who ever wrote to the deceased, and providers are generally unwilling to do it. Families experience this as obstruction. It is better understood as the provider weighing obligations to people other than the family.

Sharing passwords is the wrong solution to a real problem

The obvious workaround is to leave a list of passwords, and it is a poor idea for several reasons. Using someone else’s credentials may breach the provider’s terms and, in some jurisdictions, may fall foul of laws about unauthorised access to computer systems, regardless of family relationship or good intentions. A will is also a document that can become public in some systems, making it an unsuitable place for credentials.

The better approaches are structural: recording an inventory of what exists and where, without the secrets themselves; using the legacy contact or account successor tools that some providers offer; storing credentials in a password manager whose emergency access is properly configured; and leaving clear written wishes about what should be preserved and what should be deleted. None of that is legal advice about a particular estate, and the position on unauthorised access in particular varies.

A short planning conversation prevents most of this

How digital assets are treated on death, whether legislation grants representatives any right of access, how provider terms interact with local succession rules and how cryptocurrency is characterised all differ between jurisdictions, and this is one of the fastest-moving areas in estate practice. Nothing here is advice about a particular estate.

For anyone making a will, it is worth raising digital assets expressly with a qualified lawyer where you live, particularly if there is a business account, a domain, holdings in cryptocurrency or material with commercial value. For anyone administering an estate that includes them, take advice early: provider processes are slow, some data is deleted after a period of inactivity, and claims connected to an estate carry time limits that correspondence with a service provider does not pause.