What Happens to Your Digital Assets When You Die?

Your family may know where you keep your will. But would they know how to preserve the photographs on your phone, what you want done with your Facebook account, or whether you own cryptocurrency?

Digital assets belong in an estate-planning conversation because they can hold both financial and personal value. A wallet may contain money. A cloud account may contain the only recording of a parent’s voice. An email inbox may be the starting point for locating bills and accounts.

For families in Illinois and Missouri, planning for these assets means identifying what exists, deciding what should happen to it, and giving the right person a lawful, practical way to carry out your wishes.

Leaving someone an asset does not necessarily give them access to the account or device that holds it.

Start with the memories you want your family to keep

Facebook pictures, cloud photo libraries, videos, and saved messages can be among the most meaningful things you leave behind. Yet families may discover that a shared device does not provide access to a private account—or that an account has been scheduled for deletion.

For Facebook, you can choose a legacy contact to handle certain tasks after your profile is memorialized. You can also permit that person to download a copy of content you shared. A legacy contact cannot simply sign in as you or read your private messages. Facebook also offers an option to have the account deleted after death. Review these choices while you can still make them. Facebook’s legacy-contact guidance

For Apple, a Legacy Contact can request access to certain account data after your death using the access key and death certificate. The feature can cover photos and other stored information, but it does not provide access to everything. Passwords and passkeys in iCloud Keychain, for example, are excluded. Choosing an Apple Legacy Contact is therefore not a complete password-management plan. Apple’s Legacy Contact guidance

For Google, Inactive Account Manager lets you arrange for selected data to be shared with trusted contacts after a period of inactivity. This is an inactivity setting, so choose its timing and data-sharing options thoughtfully. Google’s Inactive Account Manager

For memories you want preserved, keep an organized backup outside the original platform and tell your family where it is. Include instructions about what may be shared and what should remain private. A memorialized profile should not be the family’s only photo archive.

Digital wallets need different plans depending on what they hold

“Digital wallet” can describe several different things. Your plan should identify which kind you use.

Payment apps and stored cards. Record any payment-app balances separately from the bank accounts and cards linked to them. A wallet that stores a payment card is not itself the underlying bank account. Your representative needs to identify the money involved and follow the applicable provider’s estate process.

Cryptocurrency held by an exchange. A company holding cryptocurrency for you may have a procedure for estate representatives. Coinbase, for example, requests a death certificate, estate-authority documents, identification, and transfer instructions. Its current guidance says individual accounts do not support beneficiary designations. Do not assume your exchange account has the same transfer-on-death options as your brokerage account. Coinbase’s deceased-account process

Cryptocurrency in a self-custody wallet. Here, the access problem can be much harder. Depending on the wallet’s design, the private keys or recovery phrase may be essential. A will or court order cannot recreate a missing cryptographic key. MetaMask, for example, warns that it cannot recover a lost Secret Recovery Phrase. MetaMask’s recovery guidance

Keep a secure recovery plan that fits the wallet you actually use. Your representative should know that the wallet exists and where authorized recovery instructions are stored. Do not put private keys or recovery phrases in an ordinary account list, email, or document intended for public filing. Anyone who obtains those secrets may be able to move the funds.

Illinois and Missouri law: access requires more than a password

Both states have laws addressing access to digital assets by estate representatives, trustees, and other fiduciaries. These laws help authorized people obtain information, but they do not give every family member unrestricted access to an account.

Illinois uses the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, 755 ILCS 70. It addresses directions made through account settings and estate documents, the disclosure of private communications, and the duties of the person handling the assets. Illinois digital-assets law

Missouri has the Missouri Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, sections 472.400–472.490. Its core planning approach is similar: coordinate the account owner’s instructions, legal documents, and the provider’s disclosure process. Missouri digital-assets law

In both states, a direction made through a qualifying provider’s online tool can override a conflicting direction in a will, trust, or power of attorney when the tool allows the user to modify or delete that direction at all times. Without such a direction, estate documents can authorize or restrict disclosure. A qualifying direction concerns access and disclosure; it does not necessarily decide who inherits the underlying property. Illinois, section 4; Missouri, section 472.415

For example, naming your son as executor does not automatically override a qualifying account setting that directs the provider not to disclose your information. Review the settings and documents together so they reflect the same wishes.

Private messages need particular attention. Missouri distinguishes the contents of communications from a catalogue showing information such as who communicated and when. Access to message contents by an estate representative depends on the deceased user’s consent or a court direction and the required documentation. Its statute calls for a written request, a certified death certificate, and evidence of authority, among other applicable requirements. Simply being a surviving spouse or child does not satisfy that process. Missouri, section 472.430

Planning should also address incapacity. Missouri expressly requires authority over the contents of electronic communications in a power of attorney for an agent requesting those contents under its statute. Ask your attorney to address this permission specifically instead of assuming general financial language covers everything. Missouri, section 472.440

Neither state’s law recreates missing encryption keys or expands the account owner’s underlying rights. Providers can require documentation, and fiduciaries must respect their legal duties and the owner’s privacy choices. For families with connections to both states, have counsel confirm the applicable law and the documents the provider will require.

When reviewing your will and powers of attorney, raise digital access specifically. If you use a revocable living trust, discuss which digital assets it should own and what your successor trustee will need to manage them.

Five steps to make your digital estate easier to manage

1. Create an inventory. List important email addresses, photo libraries, social accounts, payment apps, cryptocurrency holdings, devices, and business accounts. Identify subscriptions and automatic payments that someone will need to review. Keep passwords and recovery secrets separately secured.

2. Write down your wishes. Say which photos should be copied, which profiles should be memorialized or deleted, and which financial assets should pass to beneficiaries. Identify private material you do not want broadly shared. Coordinate these wishes with your legal documents.

3. Choose the people and permissions. Review each provider’s legacy or inactivity settings. Tell the people you name what their role involves. A person selected to preserve family photos may need different access from the person handling financial assets.

4. Plan for secure access. Include your password manager, two-factor authentication, recovery methods, and device access in the discussion. Ask how your authorized representative could obtain access if you were unavailable. Keep sensitive instructions protected and tell that person how to locate them when needed.

5. Review the plan annually. Update it when you change devices, open accounts, move cryptocurrency, or change the people you trust. Preserve important files before closing accounts or wiping devices, and coordinate those actions with the person administering the estate.

You do not need to document every online purchase to begin. Start with your primary email, your family photographs, and any account holding money. Those three areas can give your family a useful starting point.

At A.H.Steinmetz, Ltd., we can help coordinate your digital-asset wishes with your broader estate plan. Bring a list of the accounts and assets you want addressed—not passwords or cryptocurrency recovery phrases—to an introductory estate-planning conversation.

This article provides general information, not legal advice for a particular estate. Platform features and requirements can change.