Tech companies now control your digital legacy after death, leaving families locked out of emails, photos, and financial accounts despite probate law. Access depends on platform rules, not inheritance.

When someone dies, it’s tough enough to shift ownership of documents like insurance, financial, and utility bills. My recently passed grandfather had mountains of paper letters, but at least those are there for the family to clamber through.

Those of us still alive can claim ownership of a different type of agreement. We’re talking about entertainment libraries like Spotify or Netflix subscriptions, cloud storage, stock or crypto accounts, and “the keys to the kingdom” – domains like Gmail or Outlook, which have two-factor authentication.

Families might assume that when a relative passes away, probate automatically unlocks everything in their name.

However, TWM Solicitors, a private wealth and family law firm, has revealed that emotional heirlooms such as photos, messages, and emails are stored in private systems that are actually governed by corporate law.

And foresight in highly sensitive situations often involves wills dealing with physical assets like homes, and regular finances, which can cause a stir.

Families are often shocked to discover they cannot access photographs, messages, or other deeply personal content. At an already difficult time, that can be devastating,

explained Stuart Downey, partner and head of the Will, Trust and Estate Disputes team.

Tech accounts can be locked or deleted indefinitely after a period of inactivity – Google and Microsoft, for example, have been known to remove accounts after two years of inactivity.

Meanwhile, Meta doesn't delete inactive accounts, and, as many of us have experienced, Amazon is more prone to locking us out due to security issues, such as old phone numbers failing verification.

With different platforms having different rules, it’s a trickily fragmented landscape for those grieving.

Some platforms, like Apple, offer something called legacy contacts, which allow users to pre-designate what happens to their account after death, but this is an under-the-hood style feature – and not usually top of the priority list, considering what happens after we’re gone.

The thing is, it’s not necessarily the account itself that really matters, but that login details for bank accounts, for instance, are commonly buried within.

And even worse are cases of crypto wealth, which, as Downey explains, “We are already seeing cases where crypto assets are effectively lost because no one else can access them.”

And while currently you can’t inherit intangible property, the onus is on the individual to account for their digital life.