Estate planning

What a will can and cannot do for a digital estate

A will names who inherits. It does not hand anyone the keys, and reading one into probate can put your credentials in a public file.

7 min read · Reep Tech Ltd

A will is a good instrument doing a job it was designed for. It names beneficiaries, appoints an executor and directs how an estate is distributed. For a house, a bank account or a share portfolio it works, because a third party exists who is obliged to act on it.

Digital assets break that assumption in three places, and no amount of careful drafting fixes them.

A will directs. It does not unlock.

Naming your daughter as the recipient of your photo archive establishes her legal entitlement. It does not give her the password, and it does not oblige a platform in another country to give her one. Entitlement and access are separate problems. Estate planning has always assumed a locksmith exists, and for most online accounts there is no locksmith at all.

Probate is slow, and often public

Grants of probate commonly take months. Meanwhile subscriptions renew, domains lapse, two-factor codes go to a phone nobody can unlock, and the accounts that mattered most decay quietly. In many jurisdictions a will admitted to probate becomes a public document, which makes it the worst possible place to record a credential.

Anything you would not print in a newspaper does not belong in a will.

Terms of service outrank your instructions

Most platform agreements forbid credential sharing and terminate rights on death. Legislation like RUFADAA in the United States exists precisely to give fiduciaries a lawful route through this, but it works best when the account holder has recorded clear, separate consent for a named person to have access. A line in a will is weaker than an explicit, platform-aware direction.

How a vault and a will divide the work

The two instruments are complements, not substitutes. Keep the will for legal transfer of title, appointment of an executor and anything a court needs to enforce. Use a vault for what a will handles badly.

• Access, not just ownership. Credentials, keys and recovery routes, encrypted and never written into a public record.
• Speed where it matters. Funeral wishes and insurance details released within days rather than after probate concludes.
• Sequencing. Some items now, some when probate closes, some on a date years from now. A will cannot easily express that per recipient.
• Instructions. The steps to close, claim or recover each thing, written by the only person who knows how it was set up.

Drafted together, the two documents point at each other: the will names the vault and the executor's route into it, the vault holds what the will should never contain. That is the arrangement we build for, and it is worth an hour with a solicitor to get right.