You’ll meet these words in platform help pages, court forms, and lawyers’ letters, usually without explanation. Each definition below says what the term means and why it matters to you, in plain language.
Catalogue
A record of who someone messaged, when, and at what address — but not what the messages said. A documented executor can usually get this. Getting the actual contents is a separate and much harder request.
Content
The substance of a message: the words in the email, not just the fact that it was sent. Federal law treats this as private, so releasing it needs the account holder’s recorded consent or a court order.
Conservatorship
A court arrangement for managing the affairs of someone who can no longer manage their own. For digital accounts it is the weakest route: the appointment alone isn’t enough, and a court order specifically covering digital assets is required.
Custodian
The company holding the account — Google, Apple, Meta, a bank. The word matters because the law imposes duties on custodians, and because a custodian gets to choose the format in which it hands anything over.
Digital asset
Anything held in an electronic record: email, photographs, documents, domain names, cryptocurrency, loyalty points, a monetised channel. The account itself is usually not inheritable; what it holds sometimes is.
Durable power of attorney
A document naming someone to act for you, written so the authority survives your losing capacity. For digital accounts the wording matters: general authority reaches the catalogue, but reading message content needs an express grant.
Executor
The person a court appoints to administer an estate, also called a personal representative. Platforms distinguish sharply between anyone reporting a death and an executor exercising authority, and they ask for different documents for each.
Fiduciary
Anyone legally obliged to act on another person’s behalf — an executor, a trustee, an agent under a power of attorney, a conservator. The term covers all four because the law gives them overlapping but not identical powers.
Inactive Account Manager
Google’s setting for deciding in advance what happens to an account after a set period of silence. It can send a download link to as many as 10 people. Nobody can speed the timer up afterwards.
Legacy contact
Someone named in advance, inside a platform’s own settings, to handle an account after a death. Facebook and Apple both use the term for quite different mechanisms. Neither one hands over a password.
Letters testamentary
The court document proving somebody is the executor. Several platforms accept nothing else — LinkedIn expressly rejects wills, trusts, and powers of attorney in its place.
Memorialisation
Freezing an account into a fixed state rather than deleting it. On Facebook anyone’s report can trigger it, and once it happens nobody can log in — including family who know the password.
Online tool
A platform’s own setting for saying what should happen to your account. Under the model state law these outrank a will, provided the setting can be changed at any time. That is why they matter so much.
Probate
The court process that settles an estate. Wills filed for probate become public records open to inspection, which is the reason passwords must never be written into one.
RUFADAA
The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, a model law finalised in 2015 and since adopted by 47 states and the District of Columbia. It sets the order of priority for who decides what happens to an account.
Seed phrase
The 12 to 24 words that regenerate a cryptocurrency wallet’s keys. Whoever holds the phrase holds the funds, and no reset exists. Losing it is the one failure on this site with no recovery route at all.
Stored Communications Act
A 1986 federal privacy law restricting what providers may disclose. It contains no exception for death or probate, which is why a right granted by state law still doesn’t guarantee anyone gets the emails.
Terms of service
The contract accepted when an account is created. It usually forbids sharing credentials or transferring the account, and it applies after death, which is why the contractual layer often decides things the law appears to have settled.
Two-factor authentication
A second check beyond the password, usually a code from a phone or an app. It’s the reason a password alone often isn’t enough, and the reason a cancelled phone number can lock a family out permanently.
Definitions reflect United States practice as verified on July 28, 2026. They are general information, not legal advice — a lawyer licensed in the relevant state can say how any of this applies to a particular estate.