Originally published: February 5, 2016 | Last updated: September 1, 2025
TL;DR: Digital assets — social media accounts, email, photo libraries, domain names, loyalty points, and virtual currency — are real estate planning assets that most people overlook. Without a plan, your family may face costly court orders, lost accounts, and family disputes. Use a secure digital vault like LifeLocker to document your digital assets and passwords, appoint a digital executor, and set up a keyholder system so the right people get access at the right time. Never include passwords in your Will (it becomes public after probate).
What Are Digital Assets and Why Do They Matter for Estate Planning?
Digital assets refer to items which people can access through the internet while possessing sentimental or financial worth and accounts which need to be handled after death.
The main problem exists because digital assets lack any uniform legal framework that would govern their management. Different organizations operate through their own established procedures while most of them handle these matters through individual case assessments.
What Are the Three Categories of Digital Assets?
Digital assets fall into three distinct categories which require different estate planning approaches for each category:
| Category | Examples | Estate Planning Action |
|---|---|---|
| Housekeeping accounts | LinkedIn, email subscriptions, social media profiles, streaming services | Executor closes or deactivates these accounts |
| Sentimental value | Photo libraries (Flickr, Google Photos), blogs, Ancestry.com family trees, virtual worlds | Designate a beneficiary; download and preserve content |
| Monetary value | Domain names, ad revenue (blogs/YouTube), online gambling accounts, virtual currency, cryptocurrency | Include in Will; assign digital executor to transfer |
Why Do Housekeeping Accounts Matter?
People need to take responsibility for closing down their numerous online accounts which exist throughout the internet. LinkedIn keeps profiles of users who have passed away but it operates an annual system to send work anniversary congratulations to their connections.
What About Digital Assets with Sentimental Value?
These need a designated beneficiary to avoid family disputes. Photo collections, memoirs in a blog, and family trees on Ancestry.com may represent years of effort.
Which Digital Assets Have Real Monetary Value?
Some digital assets carry serious financial consequences. The money people earn from blogging and YouTube activities and gambling online and cryptocurrency investments represents actual funds.
What About Prestige Handles and Usernames?
Digital assets now exist in a growing area which connects their emotional worth to their monetary value. Early users who took Twitter and Skype and Gmail names now enjoy increasing value from their vanity or prestige “handles.”
Can Loyalty Program Points Be Transferred After Death?
In most cases, no. A Canadian woman died with 250,000 Aeroplan points, and the family wanted them transferred to her husband. Aeroplan demanded a $2,500 administration fee, triggering a social media backlash. The twist: Aeroplan is actually one of the very few loyalty programs that facilitate transfers at all, even with a fee.
Here is what the major U.S. loyalty programs say about point transfers after death:
| Program | Transfer Policy on Death |
|---|---|
| JCPenney Rewards | Not transferable. Points, certificates, and perks do not constitute member property and cannot pass to successors. |
| Delta SkyMiles | Not transferable upon death (policy changed March 2013). |
| BestBuy Rewards | Not transferable. May only be used by the member to whom issued. |
| Aeroplan (Canada) | Transferable with $2,500 administration fee. |
What Happens to Digital Assets Without a Digital Executor?
The probate process requires your Executor to show your Last Will and Testament to court for approval which then issues a document called “grant of administration” that banks accept to release your account funds.
Users of the system must get their User ID together with their password from their loved ones. Families used to search through filing cabinets when they needed to understand estate information during the last two decades.
Facebook, for example, offers an option to memorialize an account. But who makes that decision? A spouse? A child? A parent? Without a designated digital executor, these decisions lead to conflict.
Should You Share Your Passwords with Family Members?
Your password should never become a part of your shared information with family members. Users who share a master password for LastPass and Dashlane services gain complete entry to their entire digital domain which spans beyond acceptable limits.
- People want to protect their personal information because they maintain online dating accounts and private messages and medical records and purchase logs for secret items and personal journals.
- Timing problems: A master password needs to reach the right people at the right time – and not before. Premature access can have catastrophic consequences.
- No control: There is no way to grant selective access to specific accounts while keeping others private.
How Should You Document Your Digital Assets?
The solution demands more than digital asset management to handle this problem. USLegalWills.com joined forces with MyLifeLocker to develop a complete online and offline life record which serves as the perfect Executor resource.
Your Executor will encounter their most difficult responsibility when they need to find all your property assets. If these are not documented anywhere, the task is never-ending.
Why Shouldn’t You List Digital Assets in Your Will?
Your actual Last Will and Testament will face two main problems when you decide to include digital asset information in your document:
- Frequent changes: Your Will is not likely to come into effect for many years. You do not want to update it every time an account changes, as each update requires the formal signing procedure.
- Public document: Once your Will goes through probate, it becomes public. Anyone can read it. You absolutely do not want login credentials for your online accounts in a public document.
You should document your assets through the USLegalWills.com LifeLocker service because it provides a secure digital vault.
What About Digital Asset Subscription Services?
The market has received various new businesses which address digital asset challenges yet these businesses display similar operational defects:
- Ongoing subscriptions: They require monthly payments while you are alive but only deliver value after you die – meaning you pay for years with little return.
- Longevity risk: The Silicon Valley startup needs to outlive you. Statistically, this is unlikely.
- Uploaded Wills are useless: Some services claim to let you upload your Will for easy access. An uploaded Last Will and Testament is not a legal document – your Executor cannot use it.
USLegalWills.com offers a one-time lifetime subscription option, which allows you to update your LifeLocker, Last Will and Testament, and other estate planning documents throughout your life without recurring fees.
How Does the LifeLocker Keyholder System Work?
You need to deliver your recorded digital assets to their proper recipients when they need to receive them but you should prevent early access. USLegalWills.com addresses this with the Keyholder™ mechanism :
- You name a trusted keyholder
- You grant them access to specific services within your USLegalWills.com account
- When needed, the keyholder can unlock designated documents
- Documents are published only after a safety timer expires
This ensures your user IDs and passwords are available to specific people only when they need them, while remaining entirely private and secure throughout your life.
Which States Have Digital Executor Laws?
The public now understands people need to create digital executors who will handle their online accounts and digital property after they pass away.
As of the most recent review, the following states have digital estate laws in place:
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Idaho
- Indiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- Virginia
Most companies are not equipped to deal with family disputes over digital property. The Digital Beyond estimated that almost one million Facebook users in the U.S. die each year, highlighting the scale of this challenge.
What Steps Should You Take Right Now?
Protecting your digital assets requires three concrete steps:
- Prepare your estate planning documents using a service like USLegalWills.com. You need at least a Last Will and Testament no matter how old you are. Consider also a Financial Power of Attorney and a Living Will (Healthcare Power of Attorney).
- Document all your assets — including digital assets — using MyLifeLocker at USLegalWills.com.
- Designate trusted keyholders who can access this important information at the appropriate time.
Our dedicated support team can help you through this process. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.
He has over 20 years of experience helping people to write their Will and other estate planning documents. He has been interviewed by many of the major news media outlets, and has contributed to articles in The New York Times, NY Metro Parents, U.S. News & World Report, and other leading publications. He has also contributed to a number of financial planning books.
Throughout his career, Tim has written extensively on the subject of Will writing and estate planning.
- Testamentary Trusts – what are they and how are they created? - April 2, 2026
- Every document you need for a complete estate plan. - March 26, 2026
- Estate Planning in troubled times - March 12, 2026
