Your Digital Legacy NZ
Almost everything that used to sit in a shoebox now sits behind a login. The family photographs, the correspondence, the subscriptions quietly charging a card, and in a growing number of estates, real money. None of it appears on a bank statement, and an executor cannot find what they do not know exists.
The uncomfortable part is that most of it is not yours to leave. You generally hold a licence to use an account, not ownership of it, and a licence can end at death. What you can leave is access, and only where you arranged it in advance using the tools the platforms provide.
The three things to remember
Never put passwords in your will, because a will can become a public document. Use each platform's own legacy contact tool instead. And for crypto, whoever holds the seed phrase holds the asset, with no recovery if it is lost.
Once a will is admitted to probate it can be inspected, so anything written in it may become visible to people you never intended. Passwords also change, and a will amended every time you rotate a password is a will nobody keeps current. Name in the will who should have access and what you want done. Keep the credentials themselves somewhere separate, secure and current, and tell your executor where that is.
Four categories, four different answers
| What it is | What happens |
|---|---|
| Assets with real value: crypto, domain names, a monetised channel, an online business | Part of the estate. Passes under the will, if anyone can reach it |
| Sentimental content: photos, messages, documents in cloud storage | Access depends entirely on the platform's own process |
| Licences: music, films, ebooks, most software | Usually personal to you and usually end at death, whatever they cost |
| Liabilities: subscriptions, cloud storage, domain renewals | Keep charging until someone cancels them |
That third row surprises people who have spent thousands on digital media over twenty years. A library of purchased films is generally a licence to watch, not a collection to bequeath.
The tools that actually work
The major platforms have built their own succession mechanisms, and these work far better than any instruction left elsewhere, because the platform honours its own process without needing to verify a foreign court document.
The important feature of Google's tool is that it triggers on inactivity rather than on proof of death, which means it works whether or not anyone tells Google anything. That makes it the most reliable of the four, and the one worth doing first.
Even an executor holding the right password is stopped by a code sent to a phone they cannot access. When a phone is locked and its passcode unknown, the contents are frequently unrecoverable by design. Practically, that means the mobile phone passcode is the single most valuable thing to have recorded somewhere safe, because so much else depends on it.
Crypto is different, and unforgiving
Cryptocurrency held in self-custody has no provider to appeal to. There is no help desk, no identity check, no reset. The seed phrase is the asset. Whoever has it can move the funds, and if nobody has it the funds stay visible on a public ledger forever without anyone being able to touch them.
The tension is obvious: anything findable enough to inherit is findable enough to steal. The usual answer is separation. Record the existence and the broad instructions in one place, and keep the seed phrase in another, such as a sealed envelope with a lawyer, a safe deposit box, or split between two trusted people. Never store a seed phrase in email, a photo library, or a note synced to the cloud.
Remember also that crypto is an asset of the estate for tax purposes. Disposals can be taxable, and tax on cryptocurrency covers how gains are treated. An executor selling holdings needs to know the acquisition history, which is another reason to leave records rather than only keys.
Making it findable, safely
What your executor faces without it
An executor with no inventory works backwards from bank statements, finding subscriptions by the charges they leave. That finds the liabilities and almost none of the assets, because a crypto wallet, a photo archive and a domain name generate no transactions.
Cancelling subscriptions is often the most immediately valuable task, and the one nobody thinks of as estate administration. Streaming services, cloud storage and app subscriptions can keep charging a card for months. Reviewing subscriptions covers finding them, and the same method works for an estate.
Access and instructions are different things. A partner may be able to reach an account and still have no idea whether you would have wanted it memorialised, deleted, or handed to a sibling. Photographs in particular cause disputes, because they are usually the thing families most want and the thing least often addressed. A sentence each is enough.
What this guide does not cover
Probate and estate administration generally are covered elsewhere, as are wills. Business accounts, shared logins and anything owned by a company follow different rules from personal ones. Platform policies change and differ by country, so check the current position with each provider rather than relying on a description. This is general information rather than legal advice, and a large crypto holding is worth specific advice about both custody and tax before it becomes someone else's problem.
Related guides and tools
- Wills, EPA and estate guide, for the documents a digital legacy plan has to sit inside.
- Estate planning basics guide, for the wider picture beyond the accounts.
- Identity theft protection guide, for why dormant accounts are a live risk.
- Helping elderly parents with banking guide, for doing this before it becomes urgent.
Test Your Knowledge
Ten questions on what happens to your accounts.
Sources: the platforms' own published legacy and inactive account policies, which change and differ by country and should be checked directly, and New Zealand Law Society material on wills and estate administration. This is general information rather than legal advice.
Related tools and guides
- Estate beneficiary split calculator: the estate arithmetic your executor will face.
- Wills, EPAs and estates: the documents that make the digital part findable.