About the Digital Legacy Planner
Nobody plans for the afternoon a spouse needs the iCloud photos and cannot get them. Every major service has a policy for the death of an account holder, and they differ wildly: Apple and Google will hand data to a person you named in advance; Microsoft and Yahoo will not release a mailbox to anyone; a password manager without a granted emergency contact is a locked box forever; a self-custody crypto wallet has no company to ask at all. This planner lays those policies side by side for the services you actually use — what survivors get, what needs a court order, what is gone for good — with every provider page probed from our own server on 2026-09-09 and the ones behind bot walls flagged so a CAPTCHA does not surprise anyone.
The column that matters is the red one: 8 of 19 services have a legacy feature that only works if you switch it on while you are alive. Nothing you tick here leaves your browser.
Tick each set-up-now item on its card as you complete it. Progress is saved in this browser and dated, so the letter and briefing below reflect what is actually in place.
A private document to keep with your will: the services you use, the legacy contacts you named, and where the keys are kept. It deliberately contains no passwords — fill in the two fields and generate.
The action list for whoever handles your affairs: for each service, what to do, what documents to bring, and the provider’s own page. Ordered so the master keys come first.
Providers change these policies every year or two (Apple added Legacy Contact in 2021; Google shortened its inactivity window; X rewrote its rules). Put a yearly review in your own calendar, and use the dates below to see what has moved since you last looked.
How to Use the Digital Legacy Planner
Tick the services you use and read the cards. Each one is split into three honest columns: what your survivors can get, what you must set up now for that to happen, and what is gone regardless. The red badge marks the services with a legacy feature that only works in advance — do those first, because they are the difference between a family that receives your photos and one that receives a form letter. The counts at the top are real tallies of those three categories for your selection, not a score.
Three Kinds of Account, Three Different Outcomes
Accounts with a legacy feature — Google, Apple, Facebook, GitHub, the password managers — will hand something to a person you named, on terms the provider fixed: Apple gives three years of iCloud access to a Legacy Contact; Google\'s Inactive Account Manager releases exactly the data you ticked, after exactly the silence you chose. Accounts with a process but no feature — Instagram, LinkedIn, X, PayPal, the exchanges — let family memorialize, close, or claim through the estate with a death certificate and paperwork, but never log in. Accounts with neither — Yahoo, Microsoft consumer mail, Steam — end with you: Yahoo deletes on request and releases nothing; a Steam library is a bundle of licences to an account that cannot be transferred by will.
The Settings That Only Work in Advance
Four are worth doing this week. Google Inactive Account Manager: pick the inactivity window, the contacts, and the data — and consider the auto-delete, which is the kindest thing you can do for an inbox nobody should have to read. Apple Legacy Contact: five people maximum, each with an access key; the key plus a death certificate is the whole process, and a copy of the key belongs with the will. Facebook legacy contact, or the delete-after-death choice if you would rather not be a memorial page. And the one people forget: emergency access in your password manager. Bitwarden and LastPass grant a contact after a waiting period you set; 1Password works through the printed Emergency Kit. A vault without one of these is the most secure object your family will ever be unable to open.
What Survivors Get Without Any of That
Less than they expect. Providers treat a dead user\'s data as the dead user\'s, and most will not release it to anyone without a court order specifically naming the recipient and the data — Apple and Dropbox say so explicitly. What families reliably can do is close things: memorialize the social profiles so the birthday reminders stop, deactivate X, cancel the cards so the subscriptions lapse, and claim balances at PayPal, Venmo and the exchanges through the estate. That is why the executor briefing in this tool is ordered by leverage: email and the password manager first, because they unlock the rest; the social accounts last, because they can wait.
Crypto, Domains and the Things With No Company Behind Them
A self-custody wallet is the purest case: the seed phrase is the asset, and no exchange, court or government can reconstruct it. Write it on something durable, put it where the executor will look, and reference its location in your letter of instruction — never the words. Domain names are the quieter version of the same problem: a family site or a small business domain lapses when the renewal card is cancelled and can be registered by anyone the day it drops; keep auto-renew on, name the registrar, and make sure the estate keeps a card alive long enough to transfer it.
What Not to Write Down
Passwords do not belong in a will — wills become public in probate in most states — and they do not belong in a letter of instruction either, because the letter is read months later by several people and photographed by at least one of them. The letter should say that a password manager exists, where its emergency kit is, and who the legacy contacts are. The subscriber generator here is built that way on purpose and refuses to include a secret.
Related tools: the Two-Factor Auth Planner (a survivor also needs the second factor), the Password Strength Estimator, the Credit Freeze Action Plan for the financial side of a death (identity thieves read obituaries), and the Data Broker Opt-Out Plan. Browse every Security & Privacy tool for more.
Policies summarised from each provider’s own published pages, probed from our server on 2026-09-09; providers change them, so follow the linked page over this summary if they disagree, and treat the flagged links as “expect a human check”. This is planning information, not legal advice — estate law varies by state and country, and an attorney should see anything you intend to rely on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my family just use my password after I die?
Legally it is murkier than it feels — most terms of service forbid account sharing, and using a dead person's login can breach computer-misuse laws in some jurisdictions even with the best intentions. Practically it fails anyway: two-factor codes go to a phone that is locked or cancelled, and providers freeze accounts once notified of a death. The sanctioned routes exist precisely so nobody has to guess a password: Google's Inactive Account Manager, Apple's Legacy Contact, password-manager emergency access. Set those up and the question never arises.
What is the single most important account?
Your primary email. It is the recovery address for nearly everything else — bank, brokerage, utilities, subscriptions, the password manager itself — so whoever can read it can reset the rest, and whoever cannot is locked out of the rest. Google and Apple both offer a legacy mechanism for it; Microsoft and Yahoo do not, and Yahoo deletes on request rather than releasing anything. If your email lives somewhere with no legacy feature, that is the first thing to change.
Will my family get my photos?
Only if you arrange it. Apple's Legacy Contact hands over iCloud Photos for up to three years; Google's Inactive Account Manager can share Google Photos with the contacts you choose; a shared album or a family plan works while you are alive. Without one of those, Apple requires a court order and Google reviews case by case with no promise. Purchased media — films, music, books, games — is a licence in every case and does not transfer, however the photos are handled.
Should I write my passwords in my will?
No. A will becomes a public document in probate in most US states, and it is read long after the accounts needed attention. The right pattern is a letter of instruction — a private document kept with the will — that lists the services and says where the keys are (the password manager's emergency kit, the seed phrase envelope, the safe deposit box), plus the legacy contacts you have named. This tool's subscriber letter is built exactly that way: it never contains a password.
What happens to my cryptocurrency?
It depends entirely on who holds the keys. On an exchange (Coinbase and peers) there is an estate process with a death certificate and probate paperwork, because the company can move the funds. In a self-custody wallet there is no company and no process: the seed phrase is the only key, and coins whose phrase dies with the owner are gone permanently — a loss estimated in the billions of dollars already. Write the phrase down on something durable, tell your executor where it is, and say so in the letter of instruction without writing the words in it.
