Many of us don't live within the traditional image of a married couple with children and nearby relatives who naturally step into caring roles. We may be single, divorced, widowed, estranged from family, child-free, living alone, part of a blended family, in a long-distance relationship, practising various forms of non-monogamy, or simply have friends who know us more deeply than some of our biological relatives ever could. Families and support networks come in countless forms.

We spend years building digital lives; storing photographs in the cloud, running businesses through email and websites, managing finances online, documenting memories on social media, and collecting subscriptions, files, passwords, and conversations across dozens of platforms. Yet very few people make a plan for what should happen to those accounts when they die.