How to Create a Digital Estate Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

2026-02-17

A traditional estate plan covers the house, the car, the bank accounts, and the retirement fund. What it almost never covers is the 160+ online accounts the average person accumulates over a lifetime — the email that holds every financial statement, the cloud storage with decades of family photos, the cryptocurrency wallet with no recovery phrase, the 15 subscriptions still charging the credit card every month.

A digital estate plan fills that gap. It's the document (or set of documents) that ensures your family can actually access and manage your digital life when you can't — whether due to incapacitation or death.

If you've been meaning to get this done but don't know where to start, this guide walks through the process step by step.

What a digital estate plan actually is

A digital estate plan is not a legal document (though it works alongside your legal documents). It's a practical record that answers four questions:

What accounts do you have? A comprehensive inventory of every digital account — email, financial, social media, cloud storage, subscriptions, devices, and anything with a login.
How does someone access them? Credentials, PINs, recovery keys, and instructions for getting past two-factor authentication.
What do you want done with them? Your wishes for each account: keep, delete, memorialize, transfer, or archive.
Who is responsible? The person (or people) you've designated to carry out these instructions.

A will tells the world who owns your assets. A digital estate plan tells your family how to reach them.

Step 1: Inventory your digital assets

This is the foundation of everything else, and it's where most people get stuck — not because it's hard, but because it's tedious. The key is to work systematically rather than trying to remember everything from scratch.

Start with your email

Your email inbox is the best source of truth for your digital life. Every account you've ever created sent you a confirmation email. Search your inbox for terms like "welcome to," "your account," "confirm your email," "subscription," and "receipt" to uncover accounts you've forgotten about.

Check your browser

Open your browser's saved passwords (Chrome: chrome://password-manager, Safari: Settings > Passwords, Firefox: about:logins). This list is often more complete than anything you could compile from memory. Export it if your browser allows.

Work through categories

Organize your inventory into these categories:

Financial: Banks, credit cards, investment accounts, retirement accounts (401k, IRA, pension), cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets, PayPal/Venmo/Zelle, tax preparation services.

Email & communication: Email accounts (all of them — people often have 3-5), messaging apps (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram), video calling accounts.

Social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and any niche forums or communities.

Cloud storage & photos: Google Drive/Photos, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon Photos, and any backup services.

Subscriptions & services: Streaming (Netflix, Spotify, Disney+), software (Adobe, Microsoft 365), news (NYT, WSJ), fitness, meal kits, and anything else with a recurring charge.

Shopping: Amazon, eBay, other retailers with saved payment methods and order history.

Medical & health: Patient portals, pharmacy accounts, health insurance, wearable device accounts (Fitbit, Apple Health).

Government: Social Security, IRS/tax accounts, state benefits, voter registration.

Devices: Every phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and smart home device — including make, model, and how to unlock it.

Loyalty & rewards: Airline miles, hotel points, credit card rewards, store loyalty programs. These often have real monetary value.

Domains & hosting: Any websites you own, domain registrars, hosting accounts.

Don't forget the hardware

Digital assets aren't just online. External hard drives, USB sticks, SD cards, and old phones often hold data that exists nowhere else. Include these in your inventory with their physical location.

Step 2: Document access credentials

For each account in your inventory, record:

Username/email used to log in
Password (or note that it's stored in a password manager, and provide access to that)
Two-factor authentication method — is it SMS (which phone?), an authenticator app (which one?), or a hardware key (where is it)?
Recovery codes — most services provide one-time backup codes when you set up 2FA. These are essential if the phone is lost or inaccessible.
Security questions and answers — still used by some financial institutions

The security concern

Writing all of this down in one place creates an obvious security risk. Two approaches to manage it:

The split knowledge method. Keep usernames and account names in one document, passwords in a separate document, and store them in different locations. A thief who finds one document doesn't have enough to access anything.

The password manager + emergency access approach. Store all credentials in a password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, etc.) and set up the service's emergency access or family sharing feature. Then your plan only needs to document how to access the password manager itself — one master password instead of 160.

Step 3: Set up platform legacy tools

Three major platforms offer built-in tools for managing accounts after death or incapacitation. Setting these up is free and takes about 30 minutes total.

Google: Inactive Account Manager

Google's Inactive Account Manager lets you designate trusted contacts who will be notified — and can receive your data — if your account goes inactive for a period you choose (3, 6, 12, or 18 months).

Go to myaccount.google.com/inactive to set it up. You can share Gmail, Drive, Photos, and other Google services with up to 10 contacts. For a complete walkthrough, see our Google Inactive Account Manager setup guide.

Apple: Legacy Contact

Apple's Legacy Contact feature allows you to designate someone who can request access to your iCloud data (photos, notes, mail, contacts) after your death, using a special access key and a death certificate.

Set it up on iPhone: Settings > [Your Name] > Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact. On Mac: System Settings > Apple ID > Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact.

Facebook: Legacy Contact

Facebook lets you choose a Legacy Contact who can manage certain aspects of your profile after it's memorialized (pinning a tribute post, responding to friend requests). Go to Settings > Memorialization Settings to designate your contact.

Step 4: Record your wishes

For each significant account, document what you want done with it. The three main options:

Keep / Transfer: The account should be maintained or transferred to a specific person. Common for financial accounts, domain names, and accounts with monetary value.

Memorialize: The account should be preserved in a memorial state. Relevant for social media profiles where friends and family may want to continue visiting.

Delete: The account should be permanently deleted. Many people want this for email, messaging apps, and any accounts with private content.

For cloud storage and photos, specify whether the data should be downloaded and archived, shared with specific family members, or deleted.

These wishes don't need to be legally binding — they serve as clear guidance for whomever is managing your digital estate. Without them, your family will have to guess, which often leads to conflict and regret.

Step 5: Designate a digital executor

A digital executor is the person responsible for carrying out your digital estate plan. In some jurisdictions (US states that have adopted RUFADAA), you can formally appoint one in your will or power of attorney. In others, it's an informal role.

Choose someone who is:

Tech-literate — they'll need to navigate password managers, platform legacy tools, and 2FA systems
Trustworthy — they'll have access to your most private data
Available — managing a digital estate takes time, especially in the weeks immediately after a death

This is often (but not always) the same person as the legal executor of your will. If your legal executor isn't tech-savvy, consider designating a different person for the digital estate specifically.

Make sure your digital executor knows: - That they've been designated - Where to find the digital estate plan - How to access the password manager (if applicable) - That the platform legacy tools have been set up

Step 6: Store and maintain the plan

Where to store it

The plan should be stored in at least two locations:

Physical copy: A printed version in a fireproof safe, lockbox, or with your estate attorney. The printed version should include (or reference) the access credentials.

Digital copy: An encrypted file on a USB drive or in a secure cloud location. If stored digitally, ensure your digital executor can access the storage location — don't create a circular dependency where the plan is locked behind the account it's supposed to help access.

When to update it

Review your digital estate plan at least annually. Update it when you:

Create or close significant accounts
Change passwords (especially the password manager master password)
Get a new phone or device
Change your 2FA method
Add or remove platform legacy contacts
Have a significant life event (marriage, divorce, new child)

A plan that's two years out of date is better than no plan at all, but a current plan is dramatically more useful.

The conversation challenge

If you're an adult child trying to create a digital estate plan for your parents, the biggest obstacle is usually getting them to participate. The topic feels morbid, invasive, or like an accusation that they can't manage their own lives.

The most effective approach is to separate the conversation from death entirely. Frame it as emergency preparedness: "What if you got locked out of your bank account? What if your phone broke? I want to be able to help you." Once the conversation starts, the practical utility of organizing everything becomes self-evident.

Another approach: lead by example. Create your own digital estate plan first, then show it to your parent. "I just did this for my own accounts so the kids wouldn't have to deal with a mess. Want to do yours while we're at it?"

Getting it done

The hardest part of a digital estate plan isn't any individual step — it's the feeling that the project is too big to start. The key is to accept that it doesn't need to be perfect on the first pass. A plan that covers your top 20 accounts is infinitely better than a plan that covers zero because you got overwhelmed trying to document 160.

Start with email, financial accounts, and device access. Add the rest over time. Set up the three platform legacy tools (Google, Apple, Facebook). Write down your wishes. Tell your digital executor where to find everything.

If you want a structured checklist that walks you through this entire process — with the inventory template, credential documentation system, conversation scripts, and platform guides already organized for you — the Digital Legacy Kit turns this into a weekend project instead of an open-ended anxiety source.