It is not a cheerful thing to think about, but it is worth ten minutes. Your inbox holds the receipts, the subscriptions, the bank correspondence and the photos that families need afterwards. It is also the key to resetting almost every other account you own. Yet most people assume their family will simply be given access. That assumption is wrong.
Here is what actually happens, provider by provider, plus the small plan that fixes it.
The short version.
- Do nothing and the account lingers, then closes on the provider's inactivity timer.
- Providers will not give your family your password, whatever documents they supply.
- Without a plan, relatives can usually only get the account closed, not opened.
- Google has a proper tool for this. Apple has one for its accounts. Microsoft and Yahoo do not.
- Set it up now. There is no way to arrange any of this after the fact.
What to focus on
Most people arrive with one of these questions. Here are the plain answers.
- Will my family get in? Not unless you arranged it first. Providers do not release passwords to relatives.
- What happens if I do nothing? The account sits idle, then closes on an inactivity timer, often a year or more.
- Is there a proper tool? Yes, for Google and Apple accounts. Microsoft and Yahoo offer no equivalent.
- Can my executor sort it out later? Largely no. These settings cannot be created on your behalf after death.
- Should I put passwords in my will? No. A will can become public record after probate.
If you do nothing at all
Start with the default, since it is what happens to most people. Nothing, for a while. Your account stays exactly as it is, quietly receiving mail, until the provider notices nobody has signed in. Eventually its inactivity policy kicks in and the account is suspended or deleted, typically after a year or more of silence. Family can usually ask for it to be closed by supplying a death certificate and proof they represent the estate.
The default outcome is that your inbox drifts for a year or so, then quietly disappears, with nobody having read a word of it. If privacy is what you want, that is not a bad result. If you wanted someone to have the contents, it is the worst one.
The part people get wrong: nobody gets your password
Here is the assumption that trips families up. Providers will not give your relatives your password. No amount of paperwork changes that. Their terms of service commit them to keeping your account yours, which they generally honour after death as well.
A death certificate is usually enough to get an account closed, but almost never enough to get it opened. That is the whole reason planning matters. Without it, your family is left asking for a door to be locked rather than unlocked.
Google: the one that actually works
Google offers the best tool of any provider. It is also free. It lets you decide how long without a sign-in should count as gone, anywhere from three to eighteen months. You can name up to ten trusted contacts, choose exactly what each one receives and add a personal message. You can also tell Google to delete the account afterwards. When the timer runs out, Google tries to reach you first, then notifies your contacts with a link to download the data you chose.
Google's Inactive Account Manager is the closest thing to a will for your inbox, taking about five minutes to set up. It lives in the data and privacy section of your Google account. The mail arrives as a Takeout download in MBOX form, which our guide on email file formats explains how to open.
Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo
The others vary a lot. Apple has a legacy contact feature for its accounts, where the person you name receives an access key that they present along with a death certificate. Microsoft has nothing comparable. Its accounts simply close after a long period of inactivity, so anything you want passed on has to be handled another way. Yahoo is the strictest of all, taking the position that the agreement you made with them survives you, which in practice means nobody else gets in.
Only Google and Apple offer a real legacy option; with Microsoft and Yahoo the account is closed rather than passed on. If your important mail sits with one of the latter two, a copy you keep yourself is the only practical answer.
The will trap
This one catches careful people out. It seems sensible to write your passwords into your will so your executor can use them. It is a mistake. A will can become a public record once it goes through probate, which would expose every password in it. Naming a digital executor in the will is fine and useful. The credentials themselves belong somewhere private.
Name the person in your will, but keep the actual passwords somewhere private that they can reach when needed. Laws in many places also limit an executor's access to the contents of email unless you clearly gave permission, so saying plainly what you want counts for a lot.
The ten-minute plan
You do not need anything elaborate. Set up the legacy tool on the accounts that offer one, which for most people means Google and Apple. Decide who you would trust with your inbox, then name them. Keep a copy of anything that genuinely matters, such as photos or important records, somewhere outside the account, since a copy your family can already reach needs no permission from anyone. Write down which accounts exist and where the details are kept, then tell one person that note exists.
A copy your family already has is the only thing that never needs a provider's permission. That is exactly why keeping your own copy is worth it, as our guide on whether your email is automatically backed up explains. The same logic runs through what happens if you lose access to your email account.
