Digital Estate Planning

In the world we live in today, it’s no longer enough to only plan for what happens to your physical assets after you die. Yes, of course, you should have a plan for your home, your money, and your possessions, but it’s also important to have a plan for your digital assets. That means your email, social media accounts, photos, videos, and more. 

Today’s world is increasingly lived online. We no longer pass down photo albums and written letters to our loved ones. These memories now live on cloud servers and social networks, and they are often protected by a password (that likely only you know). This is why digital estate planning matters. 

Making a Plan for Your Digital Assets

While there are ways for your loved ones to handle digital assets after you die, it’s a good idea to make a plan while you’re still able. For privacy reasons, most social media, email, and cloud accounts have strong security. If you don’t create a plan for how your loved ones can access your account, you’re potentially leaving them with significant problems. 

There are options (like Gmail’s Inactive Account Manager or Apple’s Legacy Contact) that make it easy to shut off an account or allow access to certain people after you’ve died, but the specifics vary by provider and the service. You’ll want to look into these options and while you can and make decisions for what you wish to happen to your data.

Each service has different policies and will provide different access. For instance, one provider may only make it possible to shut down a deceased person’s account while another may provide full access. Research the practices of the accounts you use so you know what you’re dealing with. 

Through digital estate planning, you also get to control what happens to your accounts. Maybe you want your loved ones to post a message online that you have died. Maybe you want them to look at all your photos and read all your emails. Maybe you don’t want anyone to access anything. If you plan it out now, you can have a say in what happens. 

It’s beneficial to put together a list of your accounts, your login credentials, who is authorized to access the accounts, and what you wish to happen to the accounts while you still can. Speaking with a legal professional can be a big help with digital estate planning. It’s a great way to handle your digital footprint after you die. 

Social Media Accounts After You Die

We use social media for so many things today. It’s how we keep in touch, how we share our lives, and where we post and store photos, videos, and other memories. A lot of people have friends they only communicate with through social media.

When you die, you may want a way to tell your social media followers that you have passed. Your friends and loved ones may also want to access the photos, videos, and other content you’ve posted. This is all part of digital estate planning.

Of course, leaving an account dormant after someone has died can also potentially leave the account vulnerable to hacking or identity theft, which can be hard on the loved ones you leave behind. That’s why it’s important to have a plan for your accounts.

Death is handled differently by each social media platform. For example, Facebook provides and option to memorialize or delete an account after someone dies. You don’t need a user’s login credentials to do this. Instead, someone can request the account be memorialized by providing Facebook with proof of death (such as a death certificate). Instagram has the same ownership as Facebook, so their process is similar.

Other social networks (such as Twitter/X, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or TikTok) have varying options for closing accounts or memorializing accounts after someone has died. However, in some cases, you may need to have the user’s login and password to act.

Your Email Accounts After You Die

The fate of your email account after you die will depend on the provider. For instance, Gmail has an option where immediate family members can work with Google to close the account of someone who has died. However, in some other cases, your account will likely exist until it is closed due to inactivity. If this happens and how long it will take depends on the provider. 

For privacy reasons, most email providers make it very difficult for anyone else to access an account. If you haven’t done any digital estate planning and your loved ones don’t have your login credentials, they’ll probably have a very tough time accessing your email and it likely won’t be possible at all.

Your Cloud Storage After You Die

Many of us have photos, videos, and documents saved on cloud storage platforms like iCloud, OneDrive, or Google Drive. In some cases, these are important documents and valuable memories. So, what happens to them after you die? 

In most cases, if you don’t do any digital estate planning, the account will be locked after a period of dormancy. Depending on the provider, your loved ones may be able to gain access by providing verification of death and proof of legal right to access the account, but that depends on the service.