What Happens to My Digital Assets When I Die?

The Digital Asset Access Problem

The core problem with digital assets at death is not ownership — it is access. In the United States, the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) has been adopted in the large majority of states and sets a three-tier priority: a platform's own legacy tool (like Google Inactive Account Manager) comes first, express instructions in a will or power of attorney come second, and the platform's terms of service govern only if neither exists. Critically, executors get access to the content of electronic communications — email bodies, private messages — only with express consent, which is why a will that never mentions digital assets can leave an executor locked out.

Canada has no equivalent uniform adoption. The Uniform Law Conference of Canada published a model Uniform Access to Digital Assets by Fiduciaries Act in 2016, but only a minority of provinces and territories have enacted fiduciary-access legislation, leaving most Canadian executors to rely on general estate powers, platform policies, and negotiation. In both countries, terms of service frequently prohibit password sharing and account transfer, meaning a family member logging into the deceased's account with a saved password may technically breach the contract — and in the US, potentially computer-access statutes. The fix is the same everywhere: use platform legacy tools, put express authorization in the will, and keep credentials in a secure, private document outside it.

Crypto: The Only Asset That Can Vanish Completely

Cryptocurrency is unique in estate planning because self-custodied coins are cryptographically unrecoverable without the private keys or seed phrase. A bank account can be accessed with a grant of probate; a hardware wallet cannot. Industry analyses have estimated that millions of bitcoin — a meaningful share of total supply — are already permanently lost, much of it through death and lost keys. The widely reported QuadrigaCX collapse, where roughly $190 million CAD in customer assets became inaccessible after the founder's death, is the canonical warning: no key succession plan means total loss, regardless of what the will says.

A sound crypto succession plan has three parts: a durable physical backup of seed phrases (metal or paper, stored in a safe or safe deposit box), a will or memorandum that tells the executor the backup exists and where to find it without reproducing the keys, and an executor — or named technical advisor — capable of executing a wallet recovery. Exchange-held crypto is easier: exchanges generally release assets to an estate representative with a death certificate and probate documents, and some allow beneficiary designations. Never write keys or passwords into the will itself: probated wills are public records in Canadian and US courts.

Building a Digital Estate Plan: Inventory, Access, Instructions

Every digital estate plan starts with an inventory: a list of accounts, platforms, and approximate values — without passwords — so the executor knows what exists. The access layer then lives separately: a password manager with emergency access enabled (1Password, Bitwarden, and comparable tools all offer trusted-contact recovery), plus platform legacy tools. Apple Legacy Contact, Google Inactive Account Manager, and Facebook Legacy Contact are free, take minutes to configure, and legally outrank the will under RUFADAA's priority scheme — which makes them the highest-leverage ten minutes in all of estate planning.

The will's job is authority, not credentials: an express clause authorizing the executor to access, manage, and close digital assets and electronic communications. Instructions about what should happen — memorialize or delete social accounts, preserve photo libraries, transfer domains, cancel subscriptions — belong in a side memorandum the executor can follow. Because accounts change constantly, a digital estate plan is a living document: an annual review keeps the inventory, legacy contacts, and emergency access aligned with reality, and costs far less than the forensic account-hunting an unprepared estate requires.

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