Digital legacy and password access

If you name someone in the app and someone else in your will, the app wins.

That is the rule almost nobody knows, and it decides who reaches your accounts. Under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, adopted by the large majority of states, there is a strict order of priority:

1. The online tool the company provides, separate from its terms of service, Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, Facebook's legacy contact. If you used one, those instructions are legally enforceable.
2. Your will, trust, or power of attorney, if no online tool was offered or you declined to use it.
3. The provider's terms of service, if you did neither, which frequently means no access at all.

So do not treat this as a paperwork problem. Set the tool inside each account, then make sure your will says the same thing. If the two disagree, the tool is what gets followed.

What a fiduciary can never get

One limit applies regardless of what you signed. An executor or agent may never access the content of your electronic communications without your consent, the actual text of your emails and messages.

What they can obtain, where it is needed, is a catalogue: who you corresponded with, and when. Not what was said.

Apple Legacy Contact

Apple lets you name a Legacy Contact who can request your account data after your death. You can have more than one, and any one of them can act alone, including permanently deleting the data.

Set it up in Settings under your name, then Sign-In & Security, then Legacy Contact. Each person gets an access key. Store it with your documents: they need the key and a death certificate.

A Legacy Contact can reach photos, messages, notes, files, and device backups.

They cannot reach movies, music, books, or subscriptions you purchased, and they cannot reach anything in your iCloud Keychain, meaning your saved passwords, passkeys, and payment information are not included. Apple's own security documentation is explicit that the legacy key does not decrypt the Keychain.

Access is time-limited. Check Apple's current terms for the window that applies.

Google Inactive Account Manager

Google's tool acts on inactivity, not on death.

You set how long Google should wait after your last activity before the plan runs; you choose the waiting period during setup. Google decides whether you are still using the account from signals including recent sign-ins, activity in My Activity, Gmail usage, and Android check-ins.

You can name up to ten people to receive data, and share different data with different people. They are notified only once the waiting period has elapsed, nothing reaches them at setup. Google asks for each contact's phone number so that only that person can download the data.

Because it triggers on inactivity, nobody has to prove anything. The tradeoff is the wait, and the risk of it firing if you simply stop using the account.

Set it up at myaccount.google.com under Data & privacy.

Facebook and Instagram

Facebook lets you name a legacy contact for a memorialized account. They can write a pinned post, update the profile picture and cover photo, request removal of the account, and download a copy of what you shared, if you turned that on.

They cannot log into your account, cannot read your messages, and cannot add or remove friends. That last set matters, plenty of articles imply a legacy contact can read private messages. They cannot.

On a memorialized account, "Remembering" appears next to the name, nobody can log in, and what you shared stays visible to the audience you shared it with.

You can instead choose to have the account deleted at death.

Instagram memorializes or removes an account on request from family with proof, and immediate family can ask for removal instead. A memorialized account is frozen. Instagram has no advance legacy-contact setting the way Facebook does, there is nothing to configure ahead of time.

Password managers with emergency access

Most major password managers offer emergency access: you designate a trusted contact who can request entry, and if you do not decline within a waiting period you set, they receive it.

For credentials generally this is the cleanest answer, because it stays current on its own. The tradeoff is that your person has to know the manager exists and how to trigger the request.

Record that it exists, who has emergency access, and how to reach them, without recording the master password.

Why writing the password down is the weak option

It goes stale. Passwords rotate, two-factor blocks the login anyway, and the recovery codes live inside the account nobody can open.

It violates terms of service. Nearly every platform prohibits sharing credentials, and using a deceased person's login can get the account locked.

It creates a security problem now, a list of live credentials sitting in a binder for however many years.

And the deeper issue: a password gives access, not authority. Authority is what lets an executor act without personal liability. The online tools grant authority. A sticky note does not.

Photos, and where they actually live

For most families this is the real loss. Photographs are what people want and what most often ends up stranded behind a login.

• Know where they actually are: iCloud, Google Photos, a phone nobody backed up, an old external drive
• Keep a copy somewhere that does not need an account to open
• Tell someone it exists

Subscriptions that keep charging

Recurring charges continue until someone stops them, and they are easy to miss on a card that is still active.

Worth listing: streaming, cloud storage, software, domains and hosting, subscription boxes, gyms and clubs, dating apps, credit monitoring, app store subscriptions.

A year of statements is the fastest way to find them all.

What to actually write down

Not passwords. Write:

• Which accounts exist, and what each is for
• Which email address each is tied to
• Where the password manager is, and who has emergency access
• Which legacy contacts and inactive-account settings you configured: this is the one that outranks your will, so it belongs in writing
• Where photos are stored, and where the offline copy lives
• Which subscriptions recur, and on which card

That list helps your family and harms nobody if someone else reads it.

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The 72-Hour File has a digital section for listing accounts, and for recording which legacy contacts you set, without writing passwords in a binder. See what is inside