Some platforms hand over data. Some hand over control of a profile. Most hand over nothing at all unless you set something up in advance. What follows is what each system actually does, as of 2026, and why none of them adds up to a plan on its own.
Apple: Legacy Contact
Apple lets you name a Legacy Contact for your Apple Account, under Settings, your name, Sign-In and Security. After you die they can reach photos, messages, notes, files and device backups — but not iCloud Keychain. Your saved passwords, payment methods and passkeys are explicitly excluded.
To use the access at all your person needs two things: the access key generated when you set them up, and a death certificate. No access key, no access — so the five minutes of setup matter as much as the naming does.
Google: Inactive Account Manager
Google's version is opt-in and off by default, and most people have never opened it. You choose a wait period of three to eighteen months of inactivity, up to ten trusted contacts, and which data each may receive — Gmail, Drive, Photos and so on. When the timer runs out they get a time-limited download link.
They do not get your password, and they do not get a login. It also covers only what already lives inside Google: it cannot deliver your insurance policy or your account list.
Facebook: memorialisation
A Facebook Legacy Contact, who must already be a friend there, can pin a tribute post, change the profile photo, and — only if you allowed it — download an archive of what you shared. They cannot log in as you and cannot read your messages. You can choose permanent deletion instead. That is the whole menu.
Password managers: read the fine print
This is where real coverage lives, but the big three work differently. Bitwarden and LastPass offer true emergency access: a trusted contact requests entry, a wait period you chose runs — you can deny it while alive — and then access is granted, either view-only or as a full takeover. Both gate this behind paid plans.
1Password has no request-and-wait flow at all. You fill out an Emergency Kit PDF containing sign-in details and your master password, written down, and store it somewhere safe yourself. That is honest, but it means the drawer is the actual security boundary.
RUFADAA, in plain English
The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act — adopted in some form by nearly every US state, 49 plus the District of Columbia by most counts, with Louisiana the holdout — is what gives an executor legal standing over your online accounts at all.
The part worth knowing is the priority order. Whatever you set in a platform's own tool wins — Legacy Contact, Inactive Account Manager. Instructions in your will or power of attorney come second. The company's terms of service, the slowest and stingiest path, apply only if you did nothing.
So the practical move is both: use the free platform tools, and make sure your estate documents carry language authorising access to your digital assets. In Case gives you that wording to take to your attorney.
Why none of this is a plan
Notice the pattern. Each tool covers only its own walled garden, each requires setup in advance, and each stops short of your actual passwords. None of them covers your bank login, your utilities, your airline miles, or the forty other accounts a person accumulates.
That is not a criticism of Apple or Google. They are solving a narrower problem than "my family needs to get into everything."
The plan that works
That third note goes in your emergency folder or your letter of instruction — never inside the will itself, because a probated will typically becomes a public record.
Educational, not legal advice. In Case holds the account list, the password plan, and the digital-assets wording for your estate documents, on your phone rather than our cloud.
- One — a single place holding the credentials themselves: a password manager, or an on-device vault.
- Two — the free platform tools for the walled gardens: Legacy Contact and Inactive Account Manager, five minutes each.
- Three — a plain written note telling your executor that the vault exists, where it is, and how to get in.