The short version
- The platform's own setting outranks the will. Under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, enacted in nearly every state, a direction given through a provider's online tool — Google's Inactive Account Manager, Apple's Legacy Contact, Facebook's legacy contact — overrides a contrary direction in a will, trust or power of attorney.
- A will is only read on this question if no online tool was used, and it only reaches the contents of messages if it says so expressly. A clause appointing someone over "digital assets" does not by itself unlock an inbox.
- The reason is federal. 18 U.S.C. § 2702 bars a provider from disclosing the contents of stored communications except with lawful consent, and the compulsory route in § 2703 is open only to government — an executor has no subpoena that reaches it.
- Never put passwords in a will. A will admitted to probate is filed into a public court record, and using a dead person's credentials can be unauthorised access under 18 U.S.C. § 2701.
The setting on the platform outranks the sentence in your will
Almost every state has enacted a version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, and it settles the order of authority before anyone reaches the substance. New York's enactment is representative: a user may use an online tool to direct a custodian to disclose or not disclose digital assets, and where that tool lets the user change the direction at any time, it "overrides a contrary direction by the user in a will, trust, power of attorney, or other record".
An online tool is defined narrowly — an electronic service the provider offers in an agreement distinct from its terms of service, letting the user name someone to receive their data. A tick box buried in the terms you accepted at signup is not one. A dedicated legacy-contact screen is.
Only if no online tool was used, or the provider offers none, does the will get read. Underneath both sits the terms of service, the tier that decides by default — so an account left with no instruction anywhere is governed by a contract nobody negotiated.
Four ways in, in the order a provider considers them
- Ten minutes, no lawyer
The provider's own online tool
Beats a contrary direction in the will. Exists only where the provider built one, and only if you actually set it.
- One drafting session
Consent language in the will
Reached only if no online tool was used. Must name the content of electronic communications, not just "digital assets".
- Probate, and weeks of it
Letters testamentary on their own
Enough to close an account and get subscriber records. Content stays behind unless consent exists somewhere.
- A petition and a hearing
A court order aimed at the provider
What Apple asks for when there is no Legacy Contact. Slow, and the order still has to fit what the provider will act on.
Everything below the first rung is an application. Only the first rung is a decision you have already made.
Why the contents of an inbox are the hard part
The Stored Communications Act is what makes this unlike a bank account. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a), a provider of electronic communication service to the public may not knowingly divulge the contents of a communication it holds in storage. The exception that matters is § 2702(b)(3): disclosure is permitted "with the lawful consent of the originator or an addressee or intended recipient of such communication, or the subscriber in the case of remote computing service".
Note the shape of that. It is a permission, not a duty. And there is no matching compulsory route for a private party: § 2703, the section that forces disclosure by warrant, order or subpoena, runs only to a governmental entity. An executor with a civil subpoena is asking a provider to volunteer, and the provider may simply decline.
Whether a personal representative can supply that consent on the dead user's behalf was genuinely open until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court answered it in Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc. in 2017. The court held that personal representatives may give lawful consent for the decedent, then added the sentence people quote less often: this "does not, however, require Yahoo to divulge the contents of the decedent's communications". The Act stops standing in the way. The provider's own terms still can.
So the state statutes ask an executor for evidence of consent, not just authority. Where content is sought a custodian may require a written request, a death certificate, a certified copy of the letters of appointment, and — unless an online tool was used — the record in which the user consented to disclosure of the content of electronic communications. Proving you are the executor is the easy half.
What Google, Apple and Meta actually do
The three tools most readers have already been offered are not the same instrument, and the differences decide what an executor is left holding.
| Platform | The tool to set now | What the recipient gets | What they never get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inactive Account Manager — you set how long Google waits after your last activity | Up to ten named people are emailed a download link to the data types you picked for each | The password. Google states plainly that it cannot provide login details | |
| Apple | Legacy Contact — generates an access key to print or keep with your estate papers | Photos, messages, notes, files and device backups, through a separate legacy account, for three years | iCloud Keychain — payment details, passwords, passkeys — and purchased films, music, books, subscriptions |
| Legacy contact, chosen in advance, activating when the profile is memorialised | A pinned post, the profile and cover photos, the right to request removal, a content download if enabled | Login. They cannot sign in and cannot read your messages |
Apple shows what the absence of a tool costs. With a Legacy Contact, the access key and a death certificate are enough. Without one, Apple asks a US applicant for a court order naming the decedent and the account, finding the applicant to be the legal personal representative, agent or heir, and ordering Apple to assist. That is a probate petition, not a support ticket.
Last will and testament template
Full text, free to read and copy, including where a digital assets and consent clause sits relative to the executor appointment.
What a digital assets clause has to say to be worth anything
Most clauses on the internet do one job — appoint someone over "digital assets" — and stop. That gets an executor past the definitional question and nowhere near the inbox, because both statutes turn on consent to content, expressed separately.
The five parts of a clause that actually opens something
A digital assets clause that works
Crypto and photographs are not the same problem
People group these under "digital assets" and then find the executor's difficulty is different in each case. What separates them is not value or sentiment. It is who holds the thing.
How far ordinary estate paperwork actually reaches
Paperwork reaches it
Only consent reaches it
Only the key reaches it
A custodial exchange account behaves like any other financial account: a company holds the balance, it has an estates process, and letters of appointment plus a death certificate move it. A self-custody wallet has no custodian to serve. Whoever holds the seed phrase holds the coin, and if nobody does, the estate has an asset it can value and never collect. Treat the seed phrase like a bearer instrument — split, sealed, and located by an instruction that lives outside the will.
Photographs sit awkwardly in the middle. The files pass under the residue like any other property, but they live inside an account governed by consent — which is why an iCloud library with no Legacy Contact set is harder to recover than a brokerage account with six figures in it.
Closing an account and reading one are separate requests
Families conflate the two and then over-lawyer the easy half. Memorialising or removing a profile is handled through the platform's own request forms, with no court order in sight, and a legacy contact chosen in advance can ask for removal directly. Reading the correspondence inside is the consent question above — and no form on any platform produces the private messages.
The sequencing trap is on the other side. Google warns that once a request to close a deceased user's account has been processed, it cannot later turn over the contents. Ask for the data first. Close the account second, and only once you are sure nothing in it is needed for the estate accounts, a tax filing, or the litigation nobody has mentioned yet.
What to do this week, in this order
- 1
Inventory the accounts, not the passwords
One list of providers and account identifiers — email, cloud storage, banking, exchanges, domains, subscriptions, the phone carrier. No credentials on it. Keep it with your estate papers or in a signed declaration alongside them.
- 2
Set the online tool everywhere one exists
This is the step that outranks everything you draft later, so it goes before the drafting. Inactive Account Manager on Google, Legacy Contact on Apple, legacy contact on Facebook, and the equivalent on any other provider that offers one.
- 3
Put the credentials in a password manager with emergency access
A manager with a delegated emergency-access contact gives one named person a defined route in, revocable while you are alive. It replaces the list in the drawer and never becomes a court exhibit.
- 4
Add the consent clause to the will
Express consent to disclosure of the content of electronic communications, plus consent to access devices and accounts. Do the same in any power of attorney, which covers the years of incapacity rather than the moment of death.
- 5
Tell the executor the inventory exists
An executor who does not know there is a list will not find one. Say where it is kept and who holds emergency access, and update both when you change providers.
The order matters more than the effort. Steps two and three take an evening between them and do most of the work; step four is the fallback for providers that offer no tool. Skip step two and the best clause in the country is reached only after a probate court has issued letters and a support team has agreed to read them.
Which runs against the grain of everything else in estate planning. For most of an estate the will is the instrument and the paperwork follows it — the premise behind what happens when there is no will. Online accounts behave instead like a beneficiary designation, which quietly outranks a will. The decisive document is not the one a lawyer drafts. It is the form on the provider's own site that takes ten minutes and that almost nobody fills in.
Sources
- 18 U.S.C. § 2702 — voluntary disclosure of customer communications
- 18 U.S.C. § 2703 — required disclosure, and who may compel it
- 18 U.S.C. § 2701 — unlawful access to stored communications
- NY EPTL § 13-A-2.2 — user direction for disclosure of digital assets
- NY EPTL § 13-A-3.1 — disclosure of content of a deceased user
- California Probate Code § 871 — definition of "online tool"
- Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc. (Mass. 2017)
- Uniform Law Commission — Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, Revised
- Google — about Inactive Account Manager
- Google — requests concerning a deceased user's account
- Apple — how to add a Legacy Contact
- Apple — request access to a deceased family member's account
- Apple — requesting access as a Legacy Contact
- Facebook — what a legacy contact can and cannot do
- Utah State Archives — probate court records and public access
General information, not legal advice. This guide explains how these documents and rules generally work. Law varies by jurisdiction and changes, and none of it is applied to your circumstances here. For anything consequential, consult a licensed attorney where you are.
Frequently asked
Can an executor legally read the deceased's emails?
Only with consent that the provider will accept. The Stored Communications Act stops a provider disclosing message content except with lawful consent, and no civil subpoena compels it. That consent normally comes from a legacy tool set by the user, or from express wording in the will consenting to disclosure of the content of electronic communications. Courts have held a personal representative can supply it, but the provider is permitted to disclose, not obliged to.
How do I get into a deceased parent's Google account?
You do not get into it. Google will not provide passwords or login details under any circumstances. If your parent set up Inactive Account Manager, the people they named are emailed a link to download the data types they chose. Otherwise a family member can submit a request to obtain data from the account or to close it, and Google reviews each one individually with no guaranteed outcome.
Do I need a court order to close my husband's Facebook account?
No. Memorialising or removing a profile runs through Facebook's own request forms rather than a court. What no form gives you is access: a memorialised account cannot be logged into, and even a legacy contact chosen in advance cannot read messages. The contents of the account are a separate request governed by consent, not by relationship — which is why closure is easy and correspondence is not.
Should I list my passwords in my will?
No. A will admitted to probate is filed into a public court file, so the list becomes readable by anyone, and it will be stale by the time it is needed. Sharing credentials is also not the consent the statutes ask for, and logging in with them can amount to unauthorised access to a computer system. Use a password manager with an emergency-access contact and point the will at it.
Who inherits my crypto and my photos when I die?
Both pass under your will or intestacy like any other property — the difficulty is collection rather than title. A custodial exchange account has an estates process that letters of appointment and a death certificate will move. A self-custody wallet has no custodian: whoever holds the seed phrase controls the coin, and if nobody does, the asset is unrecoverable. Cloud photo libraries sit behind the consent rules that govern accounts.