Guide

Digital estate planning

Your digital estate is everything you leave behind online and on your devices. Planning it takes an afternoon — and spares the people you love weeks of searching at the worst possible time.

What a digital estate includes

  • Communication: email accounts, messengers, phone numbers
  • Social profiles: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok, YouTube
  • Money: online banking, brokerage accounts, PayPal, crypto wallets and seed phrases
  • Contracts: streaming, cloud storage, software, domains, hosting
  • Data: photos, videos, documents, notes and backups
  • Devices: phone, laptop, tablet and drive passcodes

Why it matters

Without a plan, subscriptions keep charging, memorial accounts stay live, and crypto holdings are lost the moment the seed phrase is. Most families do not get stuck on the law — they get stuck because nobody knows which accounts exist.

Five steps to a digital estate plan

  • 1. Inventory every account, device and recurring contract
  • 2. Consolidate credentials in a password manager with recovery keys
  • 3. Name a digital executor and back it with a written authorisation
  • 4. Record your wishes per account: delete, memorialise or hand over
  • 5. Review once a year and after every major life change

Use the tools the platforms already give you

  • Google Inactive Account Manager
  • Apple Legacy Contact
  • Facebook Legacy Contact and Instagram memorialisation
  • Password manager emergency access (1Password, Bitwarden)

A digital will is not a substitute for a will

In Germany a private will must be entirely handwritten and signed, or drawn up by a notary (§ 2247 BGB). Many other jurisdictions have comparable formal requirements. Keep the legal document on paper and keep credentials somewhere secure that the will merely points to — never inside the will itself.

Choosing where to store it

  • Encryption at rest and EU hosting under GDPR
  • Separate release rules per recipient, not one shared envelope
  • A waiting period with a veto window before anything is released
  • Export, so you are never locked in

Keep it in one secure place

Erbnis holds passwords, accounts, documents and wishes encrypted — and releases each piece to the right people at the right moment.