The average Canadian has dozens of online accounts — banking, social media, email, cloud storage, streaming services, investment platforms, and potentially cryptocurrency wallets. When you die, these digital assets and accounts need to be dealt with, but many Canadians have done nothing to prepare their executors for the challenge. Digital estate planning is a relatively new but increasingly essential part of a complete estate plan.
Digital assets include anything with value or significance that exists in a digital format:
The fundamental challenge with digital assets is access. Without usernames and passwords, your executor cannot access accounts to manage or close them. But security concerns about sharing passwords while alive are valid. And even with access credentials, your executor may not have the legal right to access accounts — many terms of service explicitly prohibit account sharing and do not have clear provisions for deceased users.
Canada does not yet have comprehensive legislation governing digital assets and estate administration. Several provinces are moving toward adopting the Uniform Law Commission's model legislation, but currently executors navigate a patchwork of platform terms of service and ad hoc arrangements.
The first step in digital estate planning is creating a comprehensive inventory of your digital accounts and assets. This document should include:
Store this document securely — not in your will (wills become public record after probate) — but somewhere your executor can access it. Options include:
Password managers like 1Password, Bitwarden, and LastPass offer "emergency access" or "digital legacy" features that allow a designated person to request access to your vault after a waiting period. Setting this up in advance is one of the most practical digital estate planning steps you can take. Your executor makes a request, and after a period (which you set, typically 30–90 days), they receive access to all your stored passwords without you having to disclose them while alive.
Cryptocurrency is entirely unlike any other asset in estate planning. There is no institution to call, no account recovery process, and no third party who can help if access is lost. If your executor does not have the private keys or seed phrase for your crypto wallet, the assets are permanently inaccessible — often called being "lost forever."
Estimates suggest billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has been lost because holders died without providing access to their wallets. For Canadians holding significant cryptocurrency, this is a critical estate planning issue.
For large cryptocurrency holdings, consider working with a lawyer to create a formal protocol for transferring access as part of your estate plan.
Each major social media platform has its own policies for deceased users:
Consider using each platform's built-in legacy planning tools now, rather than leaving your executor to navigate these processes while grieving.
Cryptocurrency is treated as property by the CRA, not currency. Capital gains tax applies on any increase in value from the time you acquired it to the time of deemed disposition at death. For significant crypto holdings, this can be a substantial tax liability. Your executor needs to know the cost base (original purchase price) of all cryptocurrency to calculate the gain correctly.
Online business assets, domain names, and digital intellectual property may also have capital gains implications. Document the cost basis and acquisition date of any digital property with financial value.
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