Digital Assets in Deceased Estates

The estate assets nobody can find

A generation ago an executor could administer an estate from a filing cabinet. Now the estate you are responsible for might include a crypto wallet on a phone you cannot unlock, an online store still taking orders, twenty years of family photos in a cloud account, and an email inbox that is the master key to all of it.

If you are the executor, these are your problem, legally. Your duty to collect and secure the estate’s assets covers digital property just as it covers the house and the bank accounts. What changes is how much time you have. A house will sit there until probate issues, whereas a domain name expires on its renewal date, an exchange account sits exposed, and a wallet whose keys are never found is gone for good. Call 1800 130 120 early, because acting in the first weeks is what saves these assets. The first call is free.

Access is the hard part

Australian law treats crypto and most digital holdings as property that passes under the will. What the law does not yet give you is a right of access. No Australian statute tells Apple, Google, Meta or a crypto exchange to hand an executor the keys. Law reform bodies have been recommending a fix for years, and nothing has been enacted anywhere in Australia, so for now you are on your own with each platform.

That leaves access running on each platform’s terms of service, and those terms were written for account security rather than for bereaved families. Many ban password sharing outright. Some platforms have deceased-user processes that work well once you provide a death certificate or grant of probate, others require court orders, and a few simply delete inactive accounts on a timer. There is one bright spot. Australian platforms that hold crypto for customers come under financial services regulation from 2026, which gives estates a regulated counterparty to deal with where the deceased used a local exchange. Cold wallets have no counterparty at all. Without the keys, nobody, court included, can move the coins.

Waiting cannot lose you the house. It can easily lose you the crypto. When we triage a new estate, that is why the digital assets go to the top of the list.

What we actually do for executors

We slot the digital estate into the ordinary administration. That means building an asset register from bank statements, devices and paperwork, then writing to platforms through their deceased-user channels with the death certificate and, once issued, the grant of probate. We secure wallets and two-factor devices before they can be wiped or reset, and we advise you before anyone logs in as the deceased, because a well-meaning family member using the deceased’s password can breach platform terms and muddy the estate’s position.

Where a digital asset is contested, whether a sibling claims the crypto was a gift, or there are doubts about transfers made in the final months, or an executor is sitting on the accounts, it becomes ordinary estate litigation with an extra technical layer, run like the disputes on our estate litigation and executor disputes pages.

What this means for your own will

If you hold crypto or run anything online, assume your executor will find nothing unless you leave a trail. Keep a register of assets and access arrangements outside the will, since the will becomes public on probate. Give your executor express power to deal with digital assets. Then tell one trusted person that the register exists. Ten minutes with us adds all of this to a will properly.

Whether you are planning ahead or holding a phone you cannot unlock, call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page and press GET FREE ADVICE. Digital assets are usually one corner of a much bigger estate, and our wills dispute lawyers take on the rest of it in the same conversation.