Organizing digital accounts and passwords for your family

Almost everything you own now sits behind a login — your email, your bank, the photos of your kids, the subscriptions that renew every month without anyone thinking about them. Organizing your digital life means three things: writing down what exists, leaving a safe way in, and saying what you want done with each piece. It is one of the few parts of a legacy plan no attorney will handle for you.

Why it matters

Your family cannot simply log in as you. Most companies will not hand an account to a spouse or a grown child on request, and some will close it rather than transfer it. A password that lives only in your head goes with you.

Email is the piece people underestimate. It is the reset key to nearly every other account you have, and it is where bills, statements, and renewal notices arrive. When nobody can open it, ordinary tasks — cancel the phone plan, find the insurance policy, stop the automatic payments — turn into weeks of phone calls. Meanwhile the charges keep going out.

Make a list of what exists

Start with an inventory, not passwords. A plain list of where you have accounts already saves your family most of the work.

Email — every address you actually use, including the old one that still receives statements.
Banking, brokerage, and retirement accounts, plus any payment app holding a balance.
Your phone carrier and internet provider. These are usually the first bills a family needs to change.
Cloud storage and photo libraries. Say plainly where the family pictures are kept.
Social media accounts, and whether you would want each one closed or left up as a memorial.
Subscriptions and memberships — streaming, software, gyms, storage, anything that renews on its own.
Domain names, websites, and online stores, including the registrar and when they renew.
Loyalty and travel points, which sometimes transfer to family and sometimes do not.
Any digital currency, and the exchange or wallet it sits in.
The devices themselves — and whether anyone else knows how to unlock them.

For each line, the provider and what it is for is enough. Skip whatever does not apply to you.

Leave a safe way in

Write down where the keys are kept, not the keys themselves.

The clean answer is a password manager. Most of them have an emergency access or trusted-contact feature: you name a person, and if you cannot respond within a waiting period you choose, access opens to them. Set that up once and it covers hundreds of accounts at the same time. Several of the big platforms have their own version too — Apple has a Legacy Contact, Google has Inactive Account Manager, and Facebook lets you name a legacy contact. Each takes a few minutes in the account settings.

What not to do: keep passwords in a document, a spreadsheet, an email to yourself, a shared note, or a file uploaded to your vault. A file full of passwords is a ring of keys that works for anyone who opens it, and it goes stale the first time you change one.

One more thing people miss: two-factor codes. If your family has the password but the code goes to a phone nobody can unlock, they are still locked out. Note which phone or authenticator app receives your codes, and where the backup codes are kept.

Say what you want done

An inventory tells your family what exists. Your instructions tell them what you actually wanted.

Accounts — close it, memorialize it, or keep it running. Say which, one line each.
Photos and videos — who should get copies, and where they should end up. Downloading an archive now is a kindness.
Subscriptions — the ones to cancel right away, and any you would want kept alive for a while.
Domains and anything business-related — who takes it over, who pays the renewal, and by when.
Anything private you would rather nobody read. You are allowed to say so, and saying so is easier than hoping.

Name a digital point person

Pick the person in your life who is comfortable with technology, and tell them you picked them. It does not have to be the same person handling your estate — the executor keeps the legal authority, and your digital point person is the one who actually knows what a registrar is. Many states have adopted laws that let a personal representative reach digital accounts, and your will can name someone specifically for it. The rules vary by state, so it is worth asking your attorney what your state requires.

Keep it current

This is the part that decays fastest. Look at it once a year, and any time you change your main email, your phone, or your password manager. Cross off accounts you close. A two-year-old list with the wrong email at the top is worse than no list, because it sends your family down the wrong path first.

Keep it safe

Store the inventory and your instructions in your Hoovalu vault and choose who in your Circle can open them. Keep the actual passwords in your password manager, where they stay encrypted and can be handed over on your terms. The vault holds the map. The password manager holds the keys.