Digital Prenuptials for Expat Couples: Who Really Owns Your Cloud Assets?

The Conversation Most Expat Couples Never Have

You and your partner moved to Europe together. You opened a joint bank account, split the rent, and merged your Netflix profiles. Somewhere along the way, one of you bought crypto. The other set up a shared Google Drive for all your family photos. You registered a domain name for a side project you built together. You've been paying jointly for iCloud storage where five years of memories live.

Now imagine one of you dies suddenly. Or you separate.

Who owns the photos? Who controls the crypto wallet? Who gets the domain? If you're both expats living under European law — law that may be different from your home country's — the answer is almost certainly: nobody knows.

This is the conversation most expat couples never have. And it's one of the most important ones you'll ever need.

Digital Assets Are Real Assets

It might feel abstract. "Cloud storage" doesn't sound like an inheritance matter. But consider what actually lives there:

• Cryptocurrency and NFTs — potentially worth thousands or tens of thousands of euros
• Domain names and websites — especially if you've built something together
• Shared photo libraries — irreplaceable family memories
• Joint creative work — manuscripts, music, designs, code repositories
• Subscription services — Spotify, Amazon Prime, Adobe Creative Cloud accounts that contain years of purchase history
• Affiliate and ad revenue accounts — with real money inside
• Email archives — containing contracts, communications, financial records

When you're an expat couple, these assets often straddle multiple countries, multiple legal systems, and multiple currencies. European countries have their own succession laws that may override what you'd expect from your home country's rules.

The Hidden Ownership Problem

Here's what makes digital assets uniquely complicated for couples: most platforms don't legally recognise joint ownership.

Your joint Google account? Google's terms of service say that account belongs to whoever's name it's under. If that person dies, the other partner has no automatic right to access it — even if they've been using it together for a decade.

The crypto wallet you funded together? If the private key is only in one person's name, or stored on one person's device, the other may never be able to access those funds — whether through death or separation.

The iCloud family plan? The primary account holder owns it. The others are guests.

This is not a philosophical point. Courts across Europe — Netherlands, Germany, France — have all faced cases where surviving partners were locked out of shared digital accounts. The legal outcome depends heavily on which country's law applies, whether you're married or cohabiting, and what documentation exists.

Marriage Doesn't Automatically Solve It

Many expat couples assume that being married protects them. It helps — but not as much as you'd think.

European matrimonial property regimes vary widely. In the Netherlands, the default since 2018 is a beperkte gemeenschap van goederen — only assets acquired during the marriage are jointly owned, not everything you brought in. In Germany, the default is Zugewinngemeinschaft, where each spouse owns their pre-marriage assets separately. In France, séparation de biens is the most commonly chosen regime for expats precisely because it keeps assets clearly separated.

None of these regimes were written with digital assets in mind. A shared Google Drive created before marriage may not fall into the "marital property" bucket at all. A crypto wallet funded from a joint account might be contested. A domain registered in one name almost certainly belongs to that person alone.

And for cohabiting couples — increasingly common among expats who move frequently and haven't yet married — the situation is even more precarious. Without a formal agreement, cohabiting partners have almost no automatic rights to each other's digital assets in most European jurisdictions.

What a Digital Prenuptial Agreement Actually Looks Like

A digital prenuptial — or a cohabitation agreement with a digital assets clause — is a legal document that explicitly addresses who owns what in your shared digital life.

It should cover:

Inventory of digital assets: A list of all significant digital accounts, wallets, subscriptions, and creative works — who owns each, and in what proportion if jointly owned.

Access provisions: Who has (or can access) credentials, recovery keys, and two-factor authentication devices in the event of death or incapacity.

Disposition on death: What happens to each asset if one partner dies — does it pass to the other? Into an estate? Are there specific wishes (e.g., a photo library to be deleted, a creative project to be donated to a foundation)?

Disposition on separation: Who gets what if you split up — and who takes over ongoing subscriptions or domain registrations.

Review clause: A commitment to update the document every two to three years, because your digital life will change dramatically.

This isn't a cold, lawyerly exercise. It's a conversation about what you've built together — and making sure both of you are protected.

The Expat Layer of Complexity

If you're both expats, or if one of you is a local national and the other is from abroad, you face an additional layer of complexity: which country's law applies?

Under EU Succession Regulation (Brussels IV), the law of the country where you habitually reside at the time of death typically governs your estate. But digital assets held on US-based platforms (Google, Apple, Meta, Coinbase) are often governed by US state law or the platform's own terms of service.

An expat who dies while living in Germany might have their physical assets governed by German law, their Dutch bank account subject to Dutch procedures, and their Apple account governed by California law. Without explicit documentation, untangling this for a grieving partner takes years.

Start Now — Before You Need To

The uncomfortable truth is that most couples don't think about this until something goes wrong. A health scare. A near-separation. A friend who died young and left their partner in chaos.

Don't wait for that moment.

A digital prenuptial isn't about distrust. It's about care. It's saying: I love you enough to make sure that if the worst happens, you're not stranded, confused, or locked out of our shared life.

Start by listing every shared digital asset you have. Then have the conversation about who owns what, and what you both want to happen to each thing. Then see a notary or lawyer in your country of residence to formalise it.

And store everything — the agreement, the account details, the recovery keys — somewhere both of you can access, and trusted people can find.

LegacyShield was built for exactly this: a zero-knowledge encrypted vault where expat couples can store shared account credentials, signed agreements, and step-by-step instructions for the people who'll need them most.

Start your free vault today — because your digital life together deserves the same protection as everything else you've built.