3 essential estate planning steps to protect your digital assets

The digital footprints that we create every day — from photos and messages to cryptocurrency and online accounts — now form a meaningful part of our estates. With the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 confirming that digital assets can be legally owned and inherited, ensuring that they can be located and accessed has become a crucial part of modern lifetime planning. 

Here, Rebecca Scaturro from our Brabners Personal team outlines the practical measures that you can take to make sure that your digital footprint is protected and managed in line with your wishes.

Three key steps for managing your digital estate

1. Create a digital assets inventory

An important first step is to create a digital assets inventory that lists details of the assets and where to find them. 

This should: 

• Exclude passwords.
• Be kept secure, private and up to date.
• Be accessible to your attorneys and executors. 

Using secure methods to store your passwords like a password manager can help to ensure that only those authorised can access your accounts. As cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum can only be accessed by private keys held in a digital wallet, it’s crucial that these are stored securely as access won’t be possible if they’re lost. 

2. Review your legal appointments

Consider whether your attorneys appointed under a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) for property and financial affairs and the executors named in your Will are appropriate to deal with your digital assets.

You may wish to:

• Update these documents if necessary.  
• Appoint separate executors with relevant technical knowledge.
• Prepare a Letter of Wishes to guide your attorneys and executors in the event of mental incapacity or death.

3. Check platform terms & conditions

While your executors can take control of most of your assets, each platform has its own rules governing what happens to accounts on death. 

For example:

• Apple allows users to appoint a legacy contact that gives them access to photos, messages and notes.
• Spotify only allows users a license to use the platform in their lifetime, meaning that accounts can’t be transferred.
• X, TikTok and Snapchat allow authorised persons to deactivate an account.
• Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn allow accounts to be memorialised. 

Understanding these differences is necessary to plan ahead effectively.

What happens on death?

Your executors will first need to locate the digital asset inventory, along with any accompanying digital wallets for blockchain assets. This will allow them to start closing or memorialising accounts and selling any financial assets. To ensure that nothing is missed, your executors should carry out a digital assets search.

Where digital assets have financial value, a valuation will need to be obtained for Inheritance Tax purposes These valuations will be separate from those relating to the hardware used to access digital assets, such as a computer or mobile phone. Capital Gains tax will also need to be considered by your executors if gains are made on the sale of cryptocurrencies. 

Talk to us

Our private client team advises on how best to structure Wills, LPAs and Letters of Wishes to reflect the growing importance of online accounts, cryptocurrencies, social media profiles and other digital property.

To discuss your digital estate planning needs and ensure that everything is properly accounted for, talk to us by giving us a call on 0333 004 4488, sending us an email at privateclient@brabners.com or completing our contact form below.

If you’re looking for the very best in personal legal advice, discover Brabners Personal — our solution that provides you with easy access to a wealth of trusted experts who can help you to plan and protect your future.