What Happens to Your Photos, Emails and Online Accounts When You Die?

Your family may know where you keep the photo albums. They may be less certain about the photographs on your phone, the documents in your email account or the online storage you pay for each month.

Those records can matter when someone dies. There might be a video of a child taking their first steps, correspondence about an insurance policy, or a collection of family photographs that nobody else has saved.

Planning your digital legacy means deciding what should happen to that information and making sensible arrangements while you can. A useful starting point is to work through the accounts you use regularly and ask what someone else would need to know.

Start with a list of your accounts

Make a private inventory of your main email addresses, photo storage, social media accounts and paid subscriptions. Include any online accounts holding money or earning income, because those will need attention as part of the estate.

For each entry, record the provider, the email address or username associated with it, and a short explanation of what it contains. Note whether you have made arrangements for someone to receive information after your death.

It can also help to record where important documents are stored, such as insurance details, financial information or family photographs.

Keep your inventory somewhere secure and tell your executors, or the person helping with your digital accounts, where to find it. You can update it as accounts change without rewriting your Will every time you change email provider.

Check what can actually be passed on

An online account, the information inside it and anything of financial value associated with it may need different treatment.

A digital purchase does not always work in the same way as a physical item. In some cases, you may only have a licence to use the content rather than owning something that can simply be passed to somebody else.

Being appointed as an executor also does not automatically mean you can access every account belonging to the person who has died. Individual providers have their own bereavement procedures and may ask for documents before releasing information.

When discussing your Will, it is worth mentioning digital assets that have financial or sentimental value, particularly if you have specific wishes about what should happen to them.

Make use of the provider's planning tools

Some online services now allow you to make arrangements in advance.

Apple, for example, allows you to nominate a Legacy Contact who can request access to certain information from your account after your death. There are limits to what can be accessed, so this should not be treated as a way of handing over complete access to everything associated with your device or Apple account.

Google offers an Inactive Account Manager. This allows you to decide what should happen if your account has been inactive for a set period of time, including whether somebody should be notified or receive selected information.

Other services may have their own arrangements.

If an account is particularly important to you, check what the provider currently offers and make use of those settings where appropriate.

Keep passwords out of your Will

A Will becomes a public document once probate has been granted, so passwords, recovery codes and other security details should not be included in it.

That does not mean your family should be left without any information.

You could keep a secure record of the accounts you use and explain where your executors can find further information if they need it. Any passwords or access details should be stored securely and separately.

It is also important to remember that knowing a password does not necessarily give somebody the legal right to use an account after your death. Your executors may still need to follow the provider's own process.

Think about the photographs you want people to have

For many people, photographs are the most important part of their digital life.

Hundreds or thousands of family photographs may exist only on a phone or in cloud storage. If nobody else knows where they are, or how they are stored, they could be difficult to recover later.

Consider keeping an additional secure copy of the photographs and videos you would most want your family to have.

You might also organise them into folders or albums so they are easier to understand. A collection labelled with names, places and dates may mean far more to your family than thousands of unlabelled files.

It is worth doing this while you can still decide for yourself what should be kept.

Give your family a workable starting point

Digital planning does not need to become a huge project.

Start with the accounts that matter most. Your main email account, photographs, financial accounts and any important subscriptions are a sensible place to begin.

Then ask yourself a few simple questions.

Does somebody know these accounts exist?

Do they know where to find the information they would need?

Have you used any of the legacy or inactive account settings available to you?

Are there photographs, documents or other digital records you would particularly want your family to preserve?

Answering those questions now can make things easier later.

At SLS Wills and More, we help clients plan for what they leave behind through Wills and estate planning. If digital assets or online records are an important part of your life, they can be considered alongside your other arrangements.

This article provides general information about planning in England and Wales. Individual account terms and the law in other jurisdictions may differ.