Writing Your Plan and Keeping It Current

The earlier chapters each solved one piece: the inventory, the law, passwords, personal accounts, crypto and a business. This chapter puts them together into a small set of documents that work as one plan, helps you choose the people who will carry it out, and sets up a yearly review short enough that you will actually do it. A digital estate plan goes stale faster than any other part of an estate plan, because accounts, devices and platform rules change every year, so the routine matters as much as the documents.

The documents that make up the plan

A complete digital estate plan is not one document but six pieces, each doing a job the others cannot.

The letter of instruction is the piece most people skip and the one that helps most. Because it is not a legal document, you can update it any evening without an attorney. It should point to the inventory from Chapter 1, explain how to reach the password manager (Chapter 3), and state your wishes in plain words. Keep the binding documents free of passwords and recovery phrases; the letter says where those are kept, not what they are.

Choosing your people

You may need more than one person, and they need not be the same.

• The executor handles the estate as a whole: the court, the institutions, the taxes. Choose for reliability and judgment.
• A digital helper is someone comfortable with technology who can work through the accounts with the executor. Some states let you name this person formally; elsewhere your will can direct the executor to involve them.
• Legacy contacts are named inside each platform. They can differ by account, but keep them consistent with your will.
• A digital curator decides what of your personal material is kept, shared or destroyed (Chapter 4).
• Backups for each role, because the first choice may be unable or unwilling when the time comes.

Ask each person before naming them, show them where the letter of instruction lives, and tell them what you expect. A plan the named people have never heard of is the plan that fails.

Beneficiary designations: the documents that override your will

Retirement accounts, life insurance and accounts with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death beneficiary go to whoever is named on the account's own form, whatever your will says. Many of these accounts are now managed entirely online, which makes it easy to forget what you chose years ago.

Three problems come up again and again:

• A former spouse still named. Some states automatically revoke a former spouse's designation on divorce, but federal law can override those state rules for employer plans such as a 401(k); the Supreme Court held in 2001 that the plan's own beneficiary form controls. The only safe fix is to update the form yourself.
• No contingent beneficiary. If your primary beneficiary dies before you and nobody else is named, the account may fall into your estate and go through probate after all.
• A spouse's rights in a workplace plan. In a 401(k) and most other employer plans, your spouse generally must consent in writing before you name anyone else as the main beneficiary.

Log in to each account, check the primary and contingent beneficiaries, and save a dated screenshot or confirmation with your letter of instruction.

The yearly review

Pick a fixed date, the same every year, and block an hour. Many people use the week they file taxes or the start of the year. Work through this list:

1. New accounts. Add any account opened this year to the inventory.
2. Closed or unused accounts. Remove them from the inventory, and delete accounts you no longer use; fewer accounts means less to secure and less for your executor to close.
3. Recovery details. Check that the recovery email and phone number on your main accounts are still yours.
4. Platform tools. Confirm your legacy contacts and inactive-account settings, and look for new after-death features on services you use.
5. Beneficiaries. Recheck every designation, especially after a marriage, divorce, birth or death.
6. Passwords. Change any password tied to a breach you were told about. Current federal guidance is to change passwords when there is a reason, not on a schedule.
7. The sealed envelope. If your master password or recovery codes changed, replace the sealed copy and date it.
8. Archives. Download your photos and important records again (Chapter 4).

Some events should trigger a review at once rather than waiting for the date: a marriage or divorce, a new child, a death in the family, a new business, a large crypto purchase, and a move to another state, because your new state's version of the fiduciary access law and its probate rules may differ from the old one's.

Is estate tax part of the picture?

For most households the answer is no. For deaths in 2026, the federal estate tax applies only to estates larger than $15,000,000 per person, and a married couple can often use both spouses' exclusions. Some states levy their own estate or inheritance tax at much lower levels, so the answer depends on where you live. Digital assets count at their fair market value like everything else. If your total is anywhere near the federal or your state's threshold, the estate tax calculator gives a first estimate before you talk to an attorney.

Where to keep it

Keep the plan where the right people can reach it and nobody else can. A sensible arrangement is the binding documents with your attorney and a copy at home, the letter of instruction and inventory in your password manager with a printed copy alongside the will, and the sealed envelope with the master password where your executor knows to look. A plan stored only in your own cloud account fails exactly when it is needed, because nobody else can open it.