A digital estate checklist

This is the practical summary. Work through it in order; the whole thing takes an evening.

Step one: the inventory

A list of what exists. No passwords. This can be stored openly, printed, and given to your executor.

Include: email accounts, banks and financial providers, investment platforms, pensions, insurance, cryptocurrency, subscriptions, cloud storage, social accounts, shopping accounts with balances, domains and hosting, business accounts, devices and where they are, and your solicitor, accountant and adviser.

Next to each, a note: what it is for, and what you want done with it.

Step two: the password manager

If you do not use one, this is the point to start.

Put every account in it, including the ones you rarely use.

Set up emergency access, nominating a trusted person with a waiting period of a week or two.

Tell that person they are nominated and how to request access.

Step three: the two things that unlock everything

Your phone passcode, written down and stored with your other documents. This is the highest-value item on the list.

Your password manager master password, stored the same way — sealed with your will, in a safe, or with a solicitor.

Never in the will itself, which may become public.

Step four: two-factor recovery

The obstacle that most often defeats families even when they have the password.

Generate and save backup codes for every account that offers them. Store them in the password manager.

Note which accounts use an authenticator app, and where the app is.

Keep the mobile number active for several months after a death, since it receives codes.

Step five: legacy settings

Go through the settings of the accounts that matter and configure whatever is offered.

Look for: legacy contact, memorialisation, inactive account manager, digital legacy, or similar.

Several major platforms and device ecosystems now offer these. They are the sanctioned route and they require setting up in advance.

Decide, for each significant account, whether you want it deleted, memorialised, or handed to someone, and record it.

Step six: back up what matters

The least technical and most valuable step.

Copy your photographs to an external drive. Keep it in a drawer. Do it once a year.

Two drives in different places is better.

Print some photographs. A physical book outlasts every technology on this page and requires nobody to log into anything.

Label the photographs that matter, with names and dates, because in twenty years nobody will know who is in them.

Step seven: the difficult review

Consider what is in your accounts that you would not want read.

There is a reasonable chance someone will read it. If that matters, deal with it now rather than relying on anyone's discretion.

Step eight: cryptocurrency, if applicable

If self-custodied, arrange a way for the seed phrase to reach your executor — sealed with your documents, split between trusted parties, or in the password manager.

Write instructions, including a warning never to enter a seed phrase into a website, since bereaved non-technical executors are targeted by recovery scams.

If held on an exchange, note which one and that a bereavement process exists.

Step nine: tell someone

Your executor needs to know: that the inventory exists and where, that a password manager is in use and how access works, and where the phone passcode is.

Four sentences.

Step ten: the annual check

Add it to whatever annual review you already do.

Update the inventory. Check the emergency access nomination is still appropriate. Back up the photographs. Confirm the location document is current.

For an executor with none of this

If you are dealing with an estate where nothing was prepared:

Do not reset or wipe any device. Do not cancel any cloud storage before retrieving its contents. Do not cancel the mobile number immediately.

Search the email inbox for receipts, statements and renewals, which is the most productive single source.

Go through twelve months of bank statements line by line.

Check the app store accounts on any device for subscriptions.

Keep the email account active for at least a year.

Register the death with credit reference agencies promptly, since deceased people's identities are targeted.

The one-line version

Write down what accounts exist, use a password manager with emergency access, record your phone passcode, and back up your photographs to a drive in a drawer.

That is most of the benefit, and it takes an evening.

Legal rights of executors regarding digital accounts differ by jurisdiction and by platform terms. Platform policies change; check current settings periodically.