Digital accounts, and who is allowed into them

Before and after · 8 min read

Having someone's password does not give you the right to use their account, and using it can breach both the platform's terms and federal computer access law. What governs this instead is a uniform act, the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which most states have adopted in some form and which sets an order of priority: any tool the platform itself offers takes precedence, then the person's will or trust, then the platform's terms of service. That is why the practical answer is almost always to use the platform's own process. Google, Apple and other major services each publish one.

Why it exists

Digital accounts sit awkwardly between property and communication. The photographs may be the most valuable thing the person owned in a family sense, while the emails may contain other people's private correspondence. The law had to reconcile an executor's need to administer an estate with a duty to everyone else in the person's inbox.

The Uniform Law Commission's answer, the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, gives priority to what the person themselves chose. If they set up a legacy contact or an inactive account tool, that instruction governs. If they did not, the will governs. If neither exists, the platform's terms do.

The practical consequence is that the most useful thing anyone can do about their own digital life is spend ten minutes setting the platform tools while alive. For the family arriving afterward, the practical consequence is that the platform's process, however slow, is the route that actually works.

How it actually works

Start by inventorying rather than accessing. List the accounts you know about from the mail, the statements, the browser and the phone. Do not log in yet. An inventory is lawful and useful. Unauthorized access is neither.

Check for a legacy tool on each platform. Google operates Inactive Account Manager, which lets a person decide in advance who receives access and whether the account is deleted after a period of inactivity. Apple operates Legacy Contact, which Apple describes as the easiest and most secure route, using an access key held by the nominated person. Several other major platforms operate similar memorialization or legacy systems, and each publishes its own process.

Where no tool was set, use the platform's deceased user process. Google accepts requests to close an account, to obtain funds from it, and to retrieve data from it, and states that it may provide content in certain circumstances but will not provide passwords or login details. It also warns that closing the account is final: once closed, it cannot later hand over the contents. Apple, where no Legacy Contact exists, generally requires in the United States a court order naming the requester as the rightful inheritor.

Handle the devices separately from the accounts. A phone or laptop in the household is physical property of the estate, and access to it is a different question from access to a cloud account. Do not factory reset anything until you are certain the cloud side has been resolved, because a reset can remove the only remaining route to the data.

Where you stand

You stand where the person put you. If they named you in a platform tool, that is the strongest position available and it usually works quickly. If they named you in the will as having authority over digital assets, that is the second strongest. If neither, you are relying on the platform's terms of service and on a court order where the platform requires one.

You are not entitled to use a password you happen to know. Terms of service prohibit it, and unauthorized access to a computer system is a federal offence in some circumstances. Families do this constantly and usually without consequence, but as an executor you are held to a fiduciary standard and should not.

You are entitled to ask for data without asking for the account. In many cases what a family actually wants is the photographs, not control of the email address. Requesting a data export is a narrower ask, and platforms grant it more readily than they grant account control.

Adoption of the uniform act varies by state, and states have amended it. Which fiduciaries it covers, what a will must say to grant authority, and what a platform may require all turn on your own state's version. A probate lawyer in your state can answer this in one conversation, and it is worth one conversation where the digital estate matters.

What to do

The mistakes that cost people

Logging in with a known password. It breaches terms of service, it can breach federal law, and as a fiduciary you are the person least able to afford doing it.
Closing an account to tidy up. Google states that once an account is closed it cannot later provide the contents, and other platforms take the same position.
Factory resetting a phone or laptop before resolving the cloud accounts. It frequently destroys the last available route to the data.
Assuming the will covers digital assets. Many wills predate these laws entirely and say nothing, which pushes the family back to the platform's terms.

Words you will meet

digital assets: Electronic records a person had a right or interest in, including accounts, files, photographs and correspondence.
online tool: A platform's own mechanism for naming who may access an account after death, which takes legal priority over a will in most states.
legacy contact: A person nominated in advance through a platform's settings to receive access to an account after the owner dies.
memorialization: A platform's process for preserving an account in a fixed state after a death, rather than deleting it.
terms of service: The contract between the account holder and the platform, which governs access where no online tool and no will provision exist.
catalogue of communications: Records of who a person communicated with and when, which the uniform act treats differently from the contents of those communications.

What this does not cover

This module does not cover cryptocurrency and private keys, which follow entirely different rules and where a lost key is genuinely unrecoverable, or the tax treatment of digital assets, which belongs to the Tax discipline.

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