In today’s digital world, much of our lives are online. At Willful our goal is to help reduce the burden on families when a loved one passes away, and a big part of this is ensuring that our digital accounts and digital assets are accessible, and our wishes for our digital legacy are known.
In this article, we’ll cover what’s involved with digital estate planning in Canada, why it’s so important, and the difference between digital assets and digital accounts. We’ll highlight how you can outline your wishes for your digital life and ensure they’re accessible to loved ones, including a clear 5-step plan to get started.
What is Digital Estate Planning?
Digital estate planning is the process of organizing and securing your online accounts, digital files, and electronic assets so that they can be managed, transferred, or deleted after death—just like your physical assets—through your will and power of attorney.
What Counts as a “Digital Estate” in Canada
In estate planning, your estate is what you own minus what you owe. For example, you may own a home, a car, and have some money in a savings account; but you may have a mortgage on that house, a car loan, and credit card debt.
Think of your digital estate as your digital footprint: your accounts, assets, and online presence that would need to be dealt with when you pass away.
Common digital assets
If you made a list of every online account you’ve created, the list would likely be dozens long. These digital accounts often fit into the following categories:
- Email accounts
- Cloud storage accounts (for example, iCloud or Dropbox)
- Photos and videos, either stored in a cloud storage account or elsewhere
- Social media accounts
- Loyalty and rewards programs (for example, Aeroplan)
- Subscriptions (for example, Netflix or Amazon Prime)
- E-commerce (for example, online shopping accounts)
- Banking
- Cryptocurrency accounts/wallets (for example, Coinsquare)
- Domain names
- Websites/blogs (for example, Wordpress or Squarespace)
Why it matters
In Canada, you appoint an executor to deal with your estate when you pass away, and this person would be responsible for closing up your digital life. This may mean accessing digital assets like cryptocurrency and ensuring they’re distributed as per the wishes in your will; accessing and closing down social media accounts, email accounts, subscriptions, and other accounts; and following any instructions you’ve outlined - for example, posting a final social media post you drafted before you passed away.
It can also make it more difficult for them to gather information - for example, 30 years ago, an executor would wait for physical mail to arrive to learn more about where you bank, or which credit cards you hold. Today, most communications happen via email, so without access to an email account, an executor might be stuck calling every bank, telecommunications provider, and utility service to determine where you have accounts.
This means there’s a risk that your executor either won’t know about or won’t be able to access your assets. Did you know that there’s approximately $1.4 billion in unclaimed bank balances in Canada? This is often because someone passed away and their loved ones didn’t know they had an account with an institution. You’d rather have your money in the hands of your loved ones, not gathering dust in a bank branch.
Or, for example, if you have digital assets like cryptocurrency. Without clear instructions, your executor may not know about those assets, and/or won’t be able to access them, for example, if they’re stored in a cold wallet and the executor doesn’t have the access key.
In summary, it creates much more work for your executor if you haven’t put an online estate plan in place, and it can mean that assets are either missed or inaccessible.
Canadian Laws and Best Practices are Evolving
If you created a will in 1995, it likely wouldn’t have had any reference to the digital world - it just wasn’t a part of most people’s daily life. But today, it’s best practice to include a digital assets clause in a will to ensure an executor has the legal authority to deal with your online footprint when you pass away.
Part of digital estate planning is understanding what you can do online, vs. what still has to happen in person. COVID spurred a lot of changes to allow more digital estate planning, since typically a will has to be signed in person, which was difficult during the pandemic; but many estate planning and estate administration tasks still must be completed in person or on paper.
Canadian rules to know
Each province has its own legislation governing wills and estates, so it’s important to understand what’s required and allowed in each province when it comes to digital processes:
A 5-Step Digital Estate Planning Checklist
There are a few concrete steps you can take to ensure your digital life is organized and your loved ones are empowered to easily deal with your digital footprint. These steps don’t take much time or cost a lot of money.
Step 1: Make or update your will and include digital authority
Having a will is the cornerstone of your estate plan - it ensures that you’ve appointed an executor who will have the authority to put your wishes into action; appoints guardians for minor children and/or pets; and ensures your assets are distributed to the people and/or charities you care about. If you pass away without a will, it means the court will appoint an executor and guardians for minors (if necessary), and it means your assets will be distributed according to a government formula.
In today’s digital world, it’s best practice to include a clause in your will that gives your executor the authority to deal with any of your digital assets or accounts. If you pass away without a will, it will be more difficult for loved ones to deal with digital service providers to access accounts.
Willful helps you easily create a will that includes a digital assets clause. Our guided platform helps you create your will and power of attorney documents from home in as little as 20 minutes.
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Step 2: Create a digital asset and account inventory
As we highlighted earlier, you likely have dozens of online accounts spanning everything from email providers to social media to subscriptions. The more information about your online accounts and digital assets you document and share with your executor and loved ones, the more easily they can access and handle any digital assets after death.
This includes not only digital accounts, but also devices. Think about your smartphone or laptop: would your spouse or executor know the passcode or password to access them? If not, how would they gain access to your online accounts?
It’s important to list any digital assets so your executor knows how to access cryptocurrency wallets or other digital assets of value - if your digital assets are stored with a provider like Wealthsimple or Coinsquare, they typically have processes for releasing these assets to executors after you pass away; if assets are stored in a cold wallet or on a hard drive, you will want to ensure any access key is accessible to your executor. If you’re not comfortable with sharing these details with your executor now, you can store them in a safe or safety deposit box, or store them with a trusted intermediary like a lawyer.
Willful provides an asset and liability list where you can list any digital assets like cryptocurrency, so your executor is aware of them.
Step 3: Set platform legacy & inactivity
While it’s important to document your wishes in your will, it’s also important to take advantage of legacy planning features directly in online accounts when they are available:
- Social media accounts:
- Facebook and Instagram allow you to add a legacy contact who would be authorized to deal with your accounts when you pass away, and to outline whether you’d like your account to stay open as a memorial account once you pass, or to be deleted after your death.
- As of January 2026, no other social media platforms have the ability to add a legacy contact, or to decide how your account will be handled after you pass away. If you have specific wishes around your accounts, you should document them for your executor. Learn more about managing online accounts after death.
- Tech providers:
- Apple allows you to name a legacy contact in your Apple ID settings, and this person can access your iCloud information after you pass away.
- Google offers an Inactive Account Manager tool, which allows you to appoint contacts who can access your accounts and/or data after you’ve been inactive for a set period of time
- Microsoft’s Digital Legacy tool allows you to give read-only access to OneDrive files after you pass away
In the absence of formal digital legacy tools/features, your executor or someone else with the legal authority to act on your behalf would typically have to reach out to each digital account provider directly in order to either shut down the account, memorialize it, or gain access to information. This can be a painstaking process, which is why it’s important to appoint legacy contacts where necessary, and provide a digital inventory that makes it easier for your executor.
Step 4: Store and share access securely
It’s not best practice to include account passwords in your will. If you do want to share passwords with your executor or loved ones, a password manager like 1Password is a great tool to store and share logins. Sharing your login details with loved ones is often the easiest and fastest way for them to access your account; though keep in mind that accessing someone else’s digital account is typically a violation of the terms of service.
If you’re not comfortable using a password manager or sharing your login details before you pass away, you can list out your various online accounts, and your executor can reach out to each provider directly after you pass away to gain access. Typically this involves providing a copy of the will and other supporting documents like a death certificate, though the requirements change based on the provider.
Step 5: Prepare your executor & loved ones
A digital estate plan is only useful if it can be put into action, so it’s important to share your plans with an executor or trusted loved ones. This could include notifying them that they’ve been appointed as an executor in your will, registering your will, notifying them where copies of the will, asset lists, and any other information about digital accounts are stored, and notifying them that you plan to appoint them as a legacy contact on any digital accounts.
You may also want to write a letter of instruction to your executor outlining any additional wishes related to your online accounts or digital footprint.
Finally, practice consistent digital privacy and security hygiene to ensure your information is secure now and after you pass away: ensure you have multi-factor authentication enabled where supported, back up your cloud storage accounts regularly, use strong passwords and ideally a password manager, and do regular reviews of your digital estate plan and legacy contacts on accounts to ensure they’re up to date.
How Willful Fits Into a Digital Plan
Willful is committed to helping you create a comprehensive estate plan, including a digital estate plan, that ensures your loved ones have the information they need to close up your life according to your wishes. Here are 6 ways Willful supports you with digital estate planning, at a fraction of the cost of a lawyer:
- Create your will and power of attorney documents online in around 20 minutes.
- Willful helps you execute your will online in provinces where it’s allowed by law - in BC, our digital execution service helps you electronically sign your will; and in provinces that support virtual witnessing, including Ontario, we’ve partnered with NotaryPro to help you witness your will online
- Create your asset and liability list on Willful, and include any digital assets like cryptocurrency.
- Use Willful’s notifications feature to notify key people named in your plan, or to notify your financial advisor.
- Register your will on Willful’s will registry to ensure loved ones can access key information when you pass away.
- Update your legal documents and asset list for free anytime to ensure your wishes are up to date.
To learn more about how Willful supports you with digital estate planning, visit our Learn Centre or reach out to our team.
Conclusions on Digital Estate Planning
Even when your loved ones know about your online accounts, it’s still time-consuming to reach out to tech providers and it can take months to deal with digital assets. Take the case of a widow in British Columbia who spent 9 months trying to access her late husband’s PayPal balance.
Taking a few small steps now can ensure the burden on your family is greatly reduced when you pass away. If you don’t outline clear instructions on how to access and deal with digital assets and online accounts, it can result in countless hours spent by loved ones trying to access and close accounts, not to mention the risk of assets being lost or inaccessible.
While it might seem overwhelming to put together a digital estate plan, you can take small, incremental steps that make a difference over time.
