There is no Ontario legislation giving your estate trustee the right to log into your accounts. Access is governed by the contract you agreed to when you signed up. If you leave nothing behind but a login screen, some of what you own is simply unrecoverable.
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Several provinces have adopted uniform legislation on fiduciary access to digital assets. Ontario has not. What governs instead is the terms of service you accepted, the provider's internal policy, and federal law that makes unauthorized use of a computer system an offence. A certificate of appointment issued under the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90e21">Estates Act</a> gives your trustee authority over your property. It does not give a technology company an obligation to let them in.
In practice a provider asks for a death certificate and the certificate of appointment, then applies its own policy. Some close the account. Some release limited content. Some do neither and will not explain. Terms of service commonly state that the account is personal, non-transferable, and terminates on death, which is a description of a licence rather than a thing you own.
Using the deceased's stored password is the usual workaround, and it carries risk. It can breach the contract, and where the account holds other people's data or is shared with a business, it can be worse than a contract problem. A trustee who is later challenged by a beneficiary has no record of what was accessed, what was downloaded and what was deleted.
So plan for authorization rather than assuming access. Three things do the work: the provider's own legacy tools, express powers in your will and power of attorney, and an inventory stored somewhere your trustee can actually reach. None of them is difficult. All of them have to exist before you need them.
Property in the legal sense includes cryptocurrency, domain names, a monetized channel or account earning advertising revenue, software and intellectual property you created, and customer data held in a cloud system. These have market value, form part of your estate, and belong in the valuation behind the <a href="/estate-information-return-ontario">Estate Information Return</a> and the estate administration tax calculation.
Most of the rest is a licence to use something while you are alive. Purchased ebooks, film and music libraries, subscriptions, and typically loyalty points and air miles, are governed by programme terms that often forfeit the balance at death or allow transfer only at the provider's discretion. Photographs and email have no market value at all, and are usually the thing the family most wants.
The tax follows the property, not the account. Cryptocurrency is property for income tax purposes, and death is a deemed disposition at fair market value under the <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-3.3/">Income Tax Act</a>. A gain can be realized whether or not anyone can locate the holdings, so records of what was bought, when, and at what cost, are part of the estate plan rather than an accounting afterthought.
Cryptocurrency held in a private wallet is the clearest case of all. If the seed phrase or private key is lost, nobody recovers the asset. Not a court order, not the exchange, not a bank. Decide now where the seed phrase lives, who can reach it, whether holdings should sit on an exchange with a documented estate process, and how the trustee will know they exist at all.
Never put passwords or a seed phrase in a will. A will submitted with a probate application becomes part of a court record that others can obtain, and you would have to re-execute the will every time a password changed. The will is the right place for authority and for who receives what. Credentials belong in a separate document that can be updated without a lawyer.
What the will should contain is a broad definition of digital assets, express power for your estate trustee to access, manage, transfer, close and delete accounts and to deal with your devices, and directions about who inherits what has value and what should simply be destroyed. Put the same authority in your continuing power of attorney for property under the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/92s30">Substitute Decisions Act, 1992</a> so it works during incapacity.
Then build the inventory. A password manager with a nominated emergency contact does the job, or a written list kept with the will and reviewed annually. List what exists even where you leave out the passwords, because a trustee who does not know an account exists cannot ask about it. Record devices, two-factor methods, recovery codes, and any hardware wallet and where it is.
Use the tools the providers already offer, since they operate by contract and work faster than any court process. Where the accounts are the business, including the domain, the payment processor, the customer records and the social accounts, treat them as part of <a href="/business-succession-estate-ontario">business succession</a>. Our <a href="/wills-estates">wills and estates</a> service covers this, with fees on the <a href="/pricing">pricing page</a>.
It is what most people do, and it is not clean. Terms of service usually prohibit it, and federal law treats unauthorized use of a computer system as an offence. The risk grows where the account holds other people's information or belongs to a business. Express authority in the will, plus provider legacy tools, gives a trustee a defensible basis for acting.
It is gone. There is no recovery mechanism, no institution to appeal to, and no order a court can make that reproduces a private key. The estate may still face tax on a deemed disposition at death of holdings it cannot access. Plan custody deliberately: where the seed phrase is stored, who can reach it, and how they will know it exists.
That depends entirely on the programme's terms, which are a contract rather than a matter of estate law. Some programmes allow a transfer to a named person on proof of death, some allow it at their discretion for a fee, and many simply cancel the balance. Check the terms of each programme you hold before assuming the points are an asset.
List the categories and the authority in the will, and keep the actual account list and credentials in a separate document you can update yourself. A will that goes through probate can become publicly accessible, and passwords change far more often than wills are re-signed. Store the separate list with the will or in a password manager with emergency access.
Anything with value that the deceased owned personally at death forms part of the estate value used to calculate the tax, including cryptocurrency, domain names and revenue-earning accounts. Value them as at the date of death and keep the supporting records. Assets with no market value, like personal photographs, add nothing to the calculation.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.