Wills for England & Wales
A will deals with what you own. The confusing part of anything digital is that some of it you own outright and most of it you only ever rented — and the two need completely different treatment.
Crypto, domain names, money in payment accounts and the copyright in anything you made are property, and can be left to somebody by name. Streaming libraries, social accounts, email and subscriptions are licences. They end with you, and no clause in any will changes that.
This page is the short version of which is which, what to do about the second kind, and the one thing that must never go in a will.
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Property · a will can give these away
01
Treated as property. It can be left to somebody by name — but only if they can reach it, which is a question about where the keys are, not about the will.
02
A registered domain is an asset with a renewal date. If nobody renews it, it lapses and anybody can take it, which is how a business quietly loses its name.
03
Balances in PayPal, Wise, Revolut and similar are money you are owed. They form part of your estate and are claimed by your executor, the same way a bank account is.
04
Photographs, writing, music, code, designs. Copyright is property, it passes under your will, and it lasts for 70 years after the end of the year you die. Say who gets it, or it falls into whatever your will says about everything else.
05
If it earns money it is a business asset, and the useful part of the clause is usually not who owns it but who keeps it running in the weeks before they do.
06
Phones, laptops and drives are ordinary possessions. The files on them are yours; the accounts they are signed into mostly are not, which is the distinction the next section is about.
Licences · a will cannot pass these on
Writing "I leave my Instagram account to my daughter" does not bind Instagram. What helps instead is information: a list of what exists, what should happen to it, and who is doing it — so your executor can close the billing and rescue the photographs rather than guess.
Spotify, Netflix, a Kindle library, films bought on iTunes. You bought a licence to use them, not a copy to own, and the licence ends when you do. It cannot be inherited however it is worded.
An Instagram, Facebook or X account is not property and cannot be left to anybody. What can happen to it is set by the platform — see below — and by whether somebody has the practical means to act.
Same again: the account is a licence, the messages inside it are a different question, and providers will generally not hand over the contents to a family member on request.
Not inheritable, and not harmless either — they keep billing the estate until somebody cancels them. A list of what you pay for is worth more here than any clause.
Almost always non-transferable under the terms you agreed to, whatever they cost.
Set on the platform, not in the will
These are the only levers that actually move the big platforms, and none of them live in your will. They take a few minutes, they are free, and they work whether or not you ever write anything else down.
Check each of these on the platform itself before relying on it. They change their terms more often than the law changes.
The one rule with no exceptions
A will that goes through probate becomes a public document. Anybody can order a copy. A private key written into it is a private key published, and there is no undoing that.
A will is also the wrong shape for a credential. It is a document you sign once in wet ink; your passwords change monthly. Anything you have to re-sign in front of two witnesses every time you rotate a password will not be kept up to date, and an out-of-date key is worse than none.
Say where the credentials are, never what they are — "the seed phrase is in the fireproof box in the loft", "the password manager master password is with my brother". That sentence is safe to publish and it is the sentence your executor actually needs.
What Exit State does with this
Exit State writes wills for England and Wales. The digital estate is one section of one will, and it does the part a will clause cannot: for each account, what should happen to it, who is doing it, whether anything inside is worth pulling out first, and whether money moves through it. Your executor gets a list they can work from.
Credentials are never recorded in that section, by design. There is a separate vault for pointers and documents, and a sealed lane encrypted in your own browser for anybody who insists on keeping a secret there — we cannot read it, and the screen says so before you use it.
General information about the law of England and Wales, not legal advice. If your estate involves a trust, a business you own outright, property abroad, or a likely dispute, see a solicitor.