In more than 60 years helping Ontario families settle estates and downsize, I’ve watched the nature of “everything a person owns” change in a fundamental way. For most of that time, an estate was physical. A house, its contents, some bank accounts, a few investments, and a box of paper records in a drawer. You could see it, touch it, and sort it.
Today, a meaningful part of almost every estate exists only on a screen. Dealing with digital assets in an Ontario estate has become one of the parts of the job executors are least prepared for, and it’s worth understanding before you’re in the middle of it.
Bank accounts are online. Bills arrive by email. Photos that used to fill albums now live in the cloud. People keep investment accounts, loyalty points, subscriptions, social media profiles, and sometimes small businesses entirely online. When someone passes away, or when a senior begins to downsize and simplify, all of that digital property has to be found, accessed, valued where relevant, and dealt with responsibly.
Why Digital Assets Are Now Part of Every Estate
A generation ago, settling an estate meant gathering paper. Statements came in the mail, the cheque book was in a drawer, and the photos were in albums on a shelf. An executor could reconstruct most of a person’s financial and personal life from what was physically in the home.
That’s no longer true. Paperless billing means there may be no statement to find. Money moves between online-only accounts. A lifetime of family photographs may exist only on a phone or in a cloud account that no one else can open. For executors, this creates a real risk: assets that can’t be located, accounts that keep charging after death, and irreplaceable personal memories that become locked away.
The challenge isn’t only financial. Some of the most painful situations I’ve seen had nothing to do with money. They involved families who couldn’t recover decades of photographs because no one knew the password, and there was no straightforward way to get one.
What Counts as a Digital Asset
“Digital asset” is a broad term, and it helps to break it down. Some digital assets have financial value, some have sentimental value, and some are mainly administrative loose ends that still need to be closed. Here’s a simple way to think about the categories.
| Type of digital asset | Common examples | Why it matters to the estate |
|---|---|---|
| Financial | Online banking, investment platforms, digital wallets, cryptocurrency | Real value that must be located, accounted for, and distributed |
| Income or billing | Email, paperless bills, subscriptions, auto-payments | Ongoing charges and important notices the executor needs to find and stop |
| Sentimental | Cloud photos and videos, personal email, messages | Often irreplaceable; high emotional value, little monetary value |
| Reward or credit | Loyalty points, air miles, gift card balances | May have transferable value depending on the program’s rules |
| Identity or presence | Social media, online profiles, personal websites | Should be closed, memorialized, or transferred to prevent misuse |
Not every account needs the same treatment. But every account needs to be found first, and that’s where most of the difficulty begins.
What Happens to Digital Assets When Someone Dies in Ontario?
This is the part that surprises people. You might assume that an executor, who has legal authority over the estate, can simply contact a bank or an email provider and gain access. In practice, it’s rarely that simple.
In Ontario, an executor’s authority over digital assets comes primarily from the will and from the general powers of an estate trustee, not from any dedicated digital-assets legislation. A few other provinces, such as Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, have passed specific laws giving fiduciaries a clearer right of access, but Ontario has not done so to date.
Two practical obstacles tend to get in the way. The first is privacy law: federal privacy rules restrict how personal information is shared, and providers often treat account contents as protected even after death. The second is terms of service: most online platforms have user agreements that prohibit anyone other than the account holder from logging in, even an executor with legal authority. The result is a gap between what estate law allows in principle and what a platform’s own rules permit in practice.
To work through this, executors usually need documentation: a death certificate, proof of their authority as estate trustee, and sometimes a direct application to the provider through its own process. To understand what’s required to establish that authority in the first place, our probate support page is a useful starting point, and our executors and trustees hub explains the wider role.
For Seniors: Getting Your Digital Life in Order
The single most helpful thing anyone can do is make their digital life findable before it’s ever needed. This isn’t about technical skill. It’s about leaving a clear trail. If you’re a senior, or you’re helping a parent prepare, here are the steps that make the biggest difference.
- Make a written inventory of your important online accounts: banking, investments, email, bill payments, photos, and social media. You don’t need to list passwords in that document.
- Store passwords securely and separately, for example in a reputable password manager, and make sure a trusted person knows how to access it when the time comes.
- Name a “digital executor,” or at least tell your executor where the inventory and password information can be found. For this to carry real weight, it should be reflected in your will.
- Turn on the legacy or inactive-account tools that some major platforms offer, which let you designate who can manage an account after you’re gone.
- Keep the inventory current. Review it once a year, the same way you’d review insurance or a will.
Downsizing is an ideal moment to do this. When someone is already sorting through a lifetime of physical belongings, it’s the natural time to organize the digital side too, while they’re able to explain what matters and why.
For Executors: Managing Digital Assets During an Estate
If you’re an executor and you’ve discovered that part of the estate lives online, here’s how to approach it methodically. Start by gathering what exists: look for a written inventory, check the deceased’s computer or phone for a password manager, and review email and mail for clues about accounts, subscriptions, and automatic payments. Then move deliberately:
- Secure the accounts you can identify, and stop recurring charges and subscriptions that are still drawing on the estate.
- Locate and document financial accounts so they can be properly accounted for and distributed, the same as any other estate asset.
- Preserve sentimental material, especially photos and personal files, before any account is closed. Once it’s gone, it’s usually gone for good.
- Use each provider’s official process for deceased accounts rather than informal logins, and keep records of every request. Clear documentation protects you if your handling of the estate is ever questioned.
- Lean on your estate lawyer for anything involving access rights or a provider that won’t cooperate.
A word of caution from experience: don’t rush to close accounts. I’ve seen executors cancel an email address only to realize afterward that it was the recovery method for the banking and investment accounts they still needed to reach. Inventory first, preserve what matters, then close in the right order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an executor access a deceased person’s online accounts in Ontario?
Not automatically. Ontario has no law giving an estate trustee a right of access to digital accounts, so executors are bound by each provider’s terms of service and by privacy law. Access is usually possible through the provider’s official “deceased account” process with a death certificate and proof of appointment, but it takes time.
Does Ontario have a law about digital assets after death?
No dedicated one. Unlike a few provinces such as Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, Ontario has not enacted fiduciary digital-access legislation, so authority comes from the will and the general powers of an estate trustee.
What counts as a digital asset in an estate?
Anything the person owned or controlled online or on a device: bank and investment accounts, digital wallets and cryptocurrency, email, cloud photos and files, subscriptions, loyalty points, and social media profiles. Some carry real financial value, others are sentimental or administrative.
How do I make sure my executor can access my online accounts?
Leave a current inventory of your accounts, store passwords in a reputable password manager a trusted person can reach, grant the necessary authority in your will, and turn on any legacy or inactive-account tools your providers offer. Planning ahead is far easier than trying to gain access after the fact.
What is a digital executor?
A digital executor is the person you designate to manage your online accounts and digital property after death. The role carries the most weight when it’s named in your will alongside clear instructions about where your account inventory and passwords can be found.
Where Digital Assets Fit in the Larger Estate
It’s easy to treat digital assets as a separate, technical problem. In reality, they’re one more thread in a complex estate that already includes a property to sell, contents to manage, beneficiaries to keep informed, and a probate process to navigate. The families who handle the digital side well are almost always the ones handling the whole estate in an organized way.
That’s the principle behind how we work at Gordons. We manage the physical estate, the real estate and the contents together, as one coordinated process with a single point of accountability. While the digital accounts themselves are something an executor typically works through with their estate lawyer and the relevant providers, having the rest of the estate handled by one accountable team frees the executor to deal with the pieces only they can. Our certified contents and probate appraisals and our full estate settlement service are built around exactly that kind of coordination.
If you’d like to talk through your specific situation, our team is always happy to have that conversation. The initial consultation is free. Get in touch with the Gordons team or call 1-800-267-2206.
