A Digital Estate Planning Checklist: What Your Family Needs When You Are Gone

Most estate planning stops at the will. The will covers property and money, but it says nothing about the forty or fifty online accounts a typical adult leaves behind: the email, the photo library, the insurance apps, the pension portal, the subscriptions that keep billing, the phone. Those accounts do not wait for the estate to settle. Some keep charging. Some keep the executor out completely. This is a practical checklist of what your family will actually need, in the order they will need it.

Start with the two documents that unlock everything

• Certified death certificates. Order ten to fifteen up front. Banks, insurers, and many companies require an original copy for each account and do not return them.
• Proof of authority. Letters of administration, letters testamentary, or the probate filing that names the executor. Online providers increasingly ask for it, not just for the will.

Map the accounts before you need them

The single biggest failure in digital estate planning is not risk, it is discovery. Families rarely know which banks, brokerages, insurers, and apps the person used, let alone the account references that identify them. The checklist that saves months is a plain list of categories with a reference per item:

• Money: banks, credit cards, pensions, investments, direct debits, and any automatic deposits.
• Shelter: mortgage, lease, utilities, insurance policies, car and home registration.
• Digital: email, photo and file storage, social accounts, password manager, domain names, and subscriptions that renew.
• Business: any side income, contracts, supplier accounts, and tax records.

Each entry needs only a reference and a hint, never the password. A note that says "the bank is Community Trust, branch 221, account 44xxxx87" is far more useful than a list of credentials that will be out of date by the time it matters.

Decide what each platform will do when you are gone

Policies are changing quickly and differ by country, so verify each one. In broad terms:

• Google and Apple offer inactive account managers and legacy contacts that release or delete data after a period of inactivity.
• Meta allows a memorialized account and a legacy contact for Facebook and is the focal point for many families.
• Email providers may grant access to the executor with a court order, which is slow and uncertain. Plan around that delay.
• Password managers differ. Some have emergency access, some give nothing when the master password is gone. Read the policy for the tool you use.

Leave clues, not credentials

Here is the hard rule for any list you keep: never store a password, master key, or recovery code anywhere your family can read. Credentials are stolen constantly, they change constantly, and a leak of a full credential dump is catastrophic. What your family actually needs is a map of where things live, the account references that identify them, and the few decisions only you can make. Combined with the platforms' own legacy features, that is enough to settle accounts without ever exposing a live login.

A working plan in one page

1. List the thirty or forty accounts under the categories above, with references only.
2. Set up inactive account managers and legacy contacts on the big platforms.
3. Add the people who will act for you, and decide what they may see and when.
4. Tell one trusted person where this map is and review it every year.
5. Revisit every time you change banks, jobs, or countries.

When to involve a professional

For large estates, business ownership, or assets in multiple countries, work with an estate attorney and an accountant before taking action on any account. Company policies, probate thresholds, and data-protection law differ by jurisdiction, so confirm each step with the specific provider and local professional.

Tools like HeirloomFile help by keeping that one-page map and the delivery instructions in one place, without storing any password, key, or credential. It is a planning aid and it is not a legal will and it never replaces professional estate advice.