Digital Assets and the Probate Process in Europe: What Executors Actually Face

The Executor's First Week

James had agreed to be executor of his brother's estate without fully understanding what that meant. His brother had died unexpectedly at 46 — no serious illness, just a heart attack on a Tuesday morning. There was a will, a property in Bristol, some investments, and a few bank accounts. James thought he had the hard parts covered.

Then he started trying to close the digital accounts.

Netflix. Spotify. A PayPal account with £800 in it. A Coinbase wallet his brother had never mentioned — which turned out to hold approximately £14,000 in cryptocurrency. A domain name that auto-renewed every year. A Dropbox account with several years of business documents. A Gmail account that controlled recovery access for most of the other accounts.

James spent six months on this. He hired a solicitor who had never dealt with digital assets before. They argued with platforms, sent death certificates to American tech companies, and eventually had to petition a court over the crypto. The estate was finally settled — eighteen months after his brother died.

This is the reality of digital estate administration. And it is getting worse every year.

Why Digital Assets Make Probate Harder

Traditional probate already tests people. In England and Wales, even a straightforward estate takes six to twelve months. In France, the délai de règlement is typically six to twelve months from the date of death. In Germany, the Erbschein (certificate of inheritance) process can take months before an executor has legal standing to act.

Digital assets don't pause while probate grinds forward. They create problems probate wasn't designed to solve.

Subscriptions keep billing. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft 365 — these services automatically charge stored payment methods. If no one knows the account exists, no one cancels it. Families regularly discover months or years of ongoing charges draining a bank account that's technically part of the estate.

Platforms are designed to resist. American tech companies — which operate most of the world's major platforms — apply California or Delaware corporate law, not EU succession law. Their terms of service typically don't recognise heirs. Access to an account is a contractual right, not a property right, which means it usually dies with the user. Google has a Legacy Contact feature; Apple has Digital Legacy; Facebook has Memorialisation. Most platforms have nothing.

Cryptocurrency sits in a different legal category entirely. Crypto held on an exchange (Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp) is at least recoverable — you can petition the exchange with a death certificate and grant of probate. Crypto in self-custody, controlled by a hardware wallet or private keys the deceased never shared, may simply be inaccessible forever. European courts are only beginning to grapple with this, and there is no cross-border EU framework yet.

Email accounts are master keys. Because most services use email for password recovery, access to the email account often unlocks everything else. But email providers have some of the strictest access policies. Google will not hand a deceased user's Gmail to a family member without a court order in most countries. The Digital Legacy Contact program helps — if it was set up in advance.

The EU Patchwork

If your estate spans multiple European countries — which is extremely common for expats — you face a layered set of rules.

EU Regulation 650/2012 (the European Succession Regulation) harmonised cross-border inheritance for traditional assets. You can choose which country's law governs your estate, typically by selecting your habitual residence or your nationality.

But this regulation does not address digital assets. It was written before the current era of cloud-dependent life. Each platform makes its own rules, and each country has its own approach to what happens when you try to enforce them.

In the Netherlands, a notaris is typically required to issue a verklaring van erfrecht before any institution will cooperate. Platforms often don't recognise this document because it has no equivalent in American legal practice.

In Germany, the Bundesgerichtshof ruled in 2018 that heirs inherit access to a deceased person's social media account — but enforcing this ruling against a US company's platform is still a practical challenge. The Erbschein gives legal standing, but platforms aren't obliged to recognise it.

In France, the règlement de succession is handled by a notaire, and the French have some protections for heirs around digital accounts, but enforcement against non-EU platforms remains inconsistent.

In Spain and Italy, succession notarios and notai are similarly empowered for traditional estate administration, but digital platforms sit outside their established authority.

The practical result: every executor dealing with digital assets is partly improvising. There is no EU-wide process, no standard form, and no guaranteed path to recovery.

What Happens to the Accounts No One Knows About

The harder problem is the accounts executors don't know exist.

Nobody keeps a complete list of their digital accounts. Most people have dozens — some dating back fifteen years. Email addresses attached to platforms that predate their current address. Cryptocurrency exchange accounts opened on a whim in 2021. Old PayPal accounts holding dormant balances. Cloud storage full of files that no longer have an obvious owner.

When no one knows these accounts exist, they don't enter the estate. They don't get closed. They continue billing, sitting, or in the case of crypto, simply remaining inaccessible until the platform goes under or the government eventually claims them as unclaimed property.

Jurisdictions across Europe have dormant account rules — Germany's prescription period for certain claims runs to thirty years, the Netherlands has rules around verjaring — but digital platforms increasingly operate outside traditional frameworks.

The One Thing That Would Have Changed Everything

After James finally settled his brother's estate, he said something that stays with him: "If he'd left me a list, it would have taken two weeks instead of eighteen months."

Not a complex plan. Not a legal structure. Just a list.

A list of accounts, where to find credentials, which assets mattered, and a note about the crypto wallet. That's it.

The systems exist to protect this information — encrypted, secure, private until the moment it's needed. What most people lack isn't the technology. It's the act of sitting down and doing it.

Every week you delay, you're adding complexity to what your executor will face. The accounts multiply. Subscriptions accumulate. Crypto moves. Passwords change.

The legal and technical obstacles your family will hit are real, but they're manageable when there's a map. Without one, even a competent executor can spend a year and a half on a single estate.

---

Your digital estate deserves the same care as your physical one. Get started with LegacyShield — the encrypted vault that makes sure the people you trust can find everything they need, and nothing they don't.