Most estates are not a filing cabinet. They are a locked phone, an unreachable email, and subscriptions still billing every month. Here is what actually happens, and what you can do now.
Most of us carry dozens of accounts: email, cloud storage, streaming subscriptions, social media, banking apps, photo libraries, health trackers. While we are alive, managing them is unremarkable. When we die, they become one of the more quietly complicated problems a family has to face.
This is not something most people plan for. It is not something most Wills address. And the people left behind often have no idea where to start.
When someone dies, their digital accounts do not simply disappear. What happens depends entirely on the platform, and the policies vary widely.
Email. Most email providers will not hand over account contents to a family member without a formal legal process. Google offers an Inactive Account Manager, which lets you designate trusted people to download your data or delete your account after a period of inactivity. If you never set this up, your family can request access, but Google assesses each case individually and there is no guarantee. Microsoft and Apple follow similarly cautious policies, often requiring a death certificate and sometimes a court order.
Social media. Facebook allows accounts to be memorialised, turning a profile into a space where friends and family can leave tributes. A designated Legacy Contact can manage certain aspects of the account but cannot read private messages or access financial information. Without a Legacy Contact nominated in advance, families must submit a formal request and provide a death certificate. Instagram follows similar rules. Twitter and LinkedIn have their own processes, which are slower and less predictable.
Apple and iCloud. Apple takes one of the stricter positions. iCloud accounts are non-transferable under Apple's terms of service, and the company has historically required a court order before granting families access to a deceased person's device or iCloud data. Apple introduced a Digital Legacy programme in 2021, but it only applies if you set it up before you die. A locked iPhone, if the passcode is unknown, is effectively a sealed box.
Banking. New Zealand banks are generally the most cooperative. They will release account information and funds once the appropriate documentation is provided, typically a death certificate and a grant of probate or letters of administration. But they only control what they control. Your online banking access is one thing. The photo library backed up to a third-party app, or the years of correspondence in your email, are another matter entirely.
Streaming and subscriptions. Netflix, Spotify, Adobe, cloud storage plans, and dozens of smaller services present a different kind of problem. Without account access, families may not know which services are still billing. These can continue drawing from a linked card or bank account for weeks or months after someone dies, often without anyone noticing until a bank statement is reviewed carefully.
An executor named in a Will has the legal authority to administer an estate. But that authority only goes as far as platforms are willing to recognise it. Most overseas platforms operate under their own terms of service, which are governed by foreign law. A New Zealand executor presenting a grant of probate to a US-based platform is not guaranteed anything.
Think about what your digital life actually contains. There is probably a primary email account that everything else flows through. A banking app or two. Possibly a KiwiSaver login, a share portfolio, or some cryptocurrency. Subscription services billing a card each month. Cloud storage holding years of photos and documents.
Your executor, even a close family member, may have no idea most of these exist. And even if they know they exist, they cannot get in.
Meanwhile, a forgotten subscription keeps charging the estate. A domain name that was part of a small business lapses because no one knew it existed. Family photos stored only in one person's iCloud become inaccessible for years.
There is no specific legislation in New Zealand that governs the inheritance of digital assets. The Property (Relationships) Act and the Administration Act deal with physical property and certain financial assets, but digital accounts fall into a grey area.
An executor's authority derives from the Will and, once granted, from a court order called probate. That authority is clear for physical assets held in New Zealand. For digital accounts controlled by overseas companies under foreign terms of service, it is less clear. The executor can request access. They cannot compel it.
There is no New Zealand equivalent of California's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which gives executors statutory authority over certain digital accounts. Submissions have been made to reform New Zealand's succession law, and digital assets have been raised in that context, but as of 2026 no specific framework exists.
What this means in practice: the law does not solve this problem for you. The platforms set their own rules. You have to work within them, and the best time to do that is now.
The practical reality for families is often a combination of small frustrations and genuine grief.
A locked phone holds years of photos. iCloud or Google Photos accounts contain family memories that cannot be recovered without the password or biometrics that died with the person. Grief is already hard. Being unable to access a decade of photos adds a particular kind of pain that is difficult to describe.
Email accounts may hold important records: medical correspondence, insurance documents, receipts for assets that might otherwise go undiscovered. Without access, executors sometimes have to piece together a financial picture from bank statements alone.
Social media accounts, when not memorialised or closed, can become strange artifacts. Friends and family may receive birthday reminders for someone who has died. Accounts may get hacked if left dormant and unsecured. These are small things in isolation, but they accumulate.
The families who cope best are the ones who already had some of this information. Not because they planned for the worst, but because someone had the presence of mind to write things down.
You do not need to hand over all your passwords to anyone. You need to make sure the right information is accessible to the right person at the right time.
None of this requires a lawyer or a large block of time. An hour of thought and organisation now can spare your family weeks of uncertainty later.
A digital estate is not only practical accounts and financial records. It is also the things that cannot be transferred by any formal process: the stories, the letters, the context that only you hold.
Many families, after someone dies, wish they had asked more questions while they had the chance. What was your childhood like? How did you meet? What do you want us to remember? These are not questions that come up naturally in daily life, and they are almost impossible to reconstruct afterward.
A life story, even a partial one, is an asset in the truest sense. So is a message written to a child for a birthday you might not be alive to see. These things live alongside the practical estate plan, and they are often what families treasure most.
The accounts can be dealt with. The words, if they are never written, cannot be recovered.
Digital estate planning, done well, holds both: the practical records that let your executor do their job, and the personal material that lets your family feel, even after you are gone, that they still know you a little better.
It is not a morbid thing to prepare. It is one of the kinder things you can do for the people who come after you.
Aftr helps New Zealand families store their digital estate securely, leave messages for the people they love, and make things a little simpler for whoever comes after. There is no pressure. Start with whatever feels manageable.
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