Three categories, and they need different things
“Digital assets” covers three quite different problems, and conflating them is why most advice on this is unhelpful.
| Category | Examples | Recoverable without you? |
|---|---|---|
| Access keys | Email, phone number, password manager | Sometimes — with process and documentation |
| Digital records of real assets | Demat holdings, fund folios, bank accounts, insurance | Yes — an institution holds them and a process exists |
| Self-custodied assets | Cryptocurrency in a private wallet, domain names, some accounts with value | Often not at all |
The middle row is the ordinary case and it is handled by nomination and a will. The first row is a logistics problem. The third is the one with no fallback, and it is the reason this article exists.
The category with no institution behind it
Self-custodied cryptocurrency is the clearest case, and the difference from every other asset is absolute.
A bank holds your deposit and can be approached with a death certificate and succession documentation. A fund house holds your units against your PAN. A self-custodied wallet is held by nobody. The private key or seed phrase is the asset — there is no institution with a record, no customer service, no recovery process, and no authority that can compel access.
Lose the key and the holding is permanently unreachable. Not frozen, not delayed — gone, verifiably visible on a public ledger and permanently inaccessible.
Which creates a genuine tension with everything else in this article. The documents index rule is that credentials never go on it. Here, the credential is the asset — so it needs a deliberate, separate arrangement rather than an exception to the rule.
Options exist and each has a trade-off: a hardware wallet with the recovery phrase held securely and separately, splitting a seed phrase across trusted parties so no single one is sufficient, or a custodial arrangement that reintroduces an institution and therefore a process. The one option that is not acceptable is doing nothing, because the default outcome is permanent loss.
Legal status and tax treatment of virtual digital assets in India have changed and continue to. Verify the current position rather than working from an older understanding.
Email is the master key
Not an asset, and more consequential than most of them.
Nearly every financial account recovers through email, statements arrive there, and it is how an executor discovers holdings nobody mentioned. Someone who can reach your inbox can eventually reach most of your financial life — which is why it is both the most useful thing to arrange and the most dangerous thing to leave lying around.
Two practical steps. Record which email address each account is registered to, in the index — that is metadata, not a credential, and it is safe. And configure the inactive-account or legacy-contact setting that several major providers offer, which allows nominated access after a defined period of inactivity. It takes minutes and is designed for precisely this.
The same applies to the phone number receiving OTPs. A number that lapses takes the recovery route for every linked account with it.
Where credentials should live
Not in the index, not in a document, not in a note in a drawer.
Use a password manager, and use its emergency access feature. Most offer a mechanism where a nominated person can request access and receives it after a waiting period during which you can decline. That structure is exactly right: useless to a thief, reliable for a family, and it does not require you to write anything down.
Then the index simply records that a password manager exists and who has emergency access. The index points at the vault; it never contains the vault.
One caution. Two-factor authentication is a substantial security benefit and it is also an obstacle for a family — an account protected by an authenticator app on a phone nobody can unlock may be unreachable. Recovery codes stored with the password manager solve this, and generating them is a five-minute job most people skip.
Digital holdings that are genuinely worth something
- Domain names, which expire if the renewal card fails and are then lost to whoever registers them next.
- Monetised accounts — a channel, a page, a store with revenue attached. Platform terms usually govern what happens, and they are frequently not what a family expects.
- Loyalty points and wallet balances, which vary from transferable to forfeited on death.
- Business accounts — hosting, cloud infrastructure, payment gateways. Losing access can stop a running business rather than merely lose an asset.
- Purchased digital libraries, most of which are licences that end with the account rather than property that transfers.
The general point worth carrying: much of what feels like ownership online is a licence governed by terms of service, and those terms may override what a will says. Where something has real value, check the platform's actual policy rather than assuming it passes like a bank balance.
The arrangement, in an afternoon
- List digital holdings with value in the index — what exists and where, never how to log in.
- Record which email address each financial account is registered to.
- Set up a password manager and configure emergency access for one trusted person.
- Store 2FA recovery codes in it.
- Configure legacy-contact settings on email and any major platform that offers them.
- Handle self-custodied crypto deliberately — a specific arrangement, not a note. This is the one with no fallback.
- List recurring subscriptions and autopay mandates, which otherwise keep debiting for months.
- Review annually, alongside the index and the will.
The part that behaves normally
Worth ending on the reassuring half. Mutual funds, demat holdings, deposits and insurance are all digital records of real assets held by regulated institutions — they have nomination, a transmission process, and a route to trace them against a PAN. They are the well-behaved category.
FNOTrader's Mutual Funds app values holdings against the full AMFI NAV history — around 34 million NAV rows — so the index can carry current figures. The genuinely hard cases are the ones with no institution behind them, and those are the ones worth spending the afternoon on.
FNOTrader is not a law firm and this is not legal or tax advice.
Common questions
What counts as a digital asset for estate planning?
Three different things: access keys such as email and password managers, digital records of real assets like demat holdings and fund folios, and self-custodied assets such as cryptocurrency or domain names. Only the last category has no institution behind it.
Why is self-custodied cryptocurrency different?
Because the private key or seed phrase is the asset. No institution holds a record, so there is no customer service, no recovery process and no authority that can compel access. Lose the key and the holding is permanently unreachable rather than merely delayed.
Should I write my crypto seed phrase in my documents index?
No — the index rule is that credentials never go on it. Crypto needs a deliberate separate arrangement instead: a hardware wallet with the recovery phrase held securely, splitting the phrase across trusted parties, or a custodial arrangement that reintroduces a process.
Why is email the most important digital asset to plan for?
Because nearly every financial account recovers through it and statements arrive there, so whoever can reach your inbox can eventually reach most of your financial life. Record which address each account uses, and configure the provider's legacy-contact setting.
Where should passwords be stored?
In a password manager with its emergency access feature configured — a nominated person requests access and receives it after a waiting period during which you can decline. The index then records only that the vault exists and who has access.
What happens to two-factor authentication if I die?
It can lock a family out entirely, since an account protected by an authenticator app on a phone nobody can unlock may be unreachable. Storing 2FA recovery codes in the password manager solves it, and generating them takes about five minutes.
Do my online accounts pass to my family under my will?
Often not as expected. Much of what feels like ownership online is a licence governed by terms of service, and those terms may override what a will says. Where something has real value, check the platform's actual policy rather than assuming it passes like a bank balance.
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