It might be something that many of us prefer to keep at the back of our minds, but there are times when we need to give some thought to what happens after we die. Even when we do consider our mortality, though, the fate of our online property is something that often gets overlooked.

Much of this property has sentimental value – for example email folders, photographs and documents stored in the cloud, and our presence on social media sites – but it can also have financial value.

Either way, you probably don’t want it to evaporate. You might also want to disable or deactivate an account to prevent, say, people making unwanted posts on a Facebook wall.

Yet succession law is somewhat vague about some types of online property with the result that, unless you’ve shared your passwords, your relatives or the beneficiaries in your will may be unable to inherit it.

Here we look at what UK law says about the subject, at how the big companies who administer our online assets interpret that law, and at what you can do to ensure that your wishes are met.

See also: what are my rights when buying tech kit in the UK

What happens to your online accounts when you die: the law

To understand the legal situation we spoke to solicitor Ian Bond, Partner at Higgs & Sons, and Member of the Law Society’s Wills & Equity Committee who told us that, according to law in England and Wales, “it is the duty of a personal representative to collect and get in the real and personal estate of the deceased and administer it according to law”. “If the deceased had digital assets”, he said, “the personal representatives have a duty to protect those assets and collect them for the beneficiaries”.

We’ll see later how this applies to online assets that have some financial value but, to start, we’ll think about online property that has mainly sentimental value. Here, things are rarely as simple as Ian’s initial statement might suggest as he went on to explain.

“Digital assets are mostly stored on shared servers; the service providers may be based in a different country from their users, and they may store data on servers in many countries, making it unclear whose laws would apply”.

To clarify, he gave an example. “Just because a user dies in London with a Facebook or Twitter account, it doesn’t mean that English law will apply in dealing with those digital assets”, he explained. “In the absence of clarity on which countries’ laws apply, how a digital service-provider deals with an asset following the death of the user becomes a matter for the provider’s terms of use. No uniformity exists so, in reality, each separate digital service provider sits in final judgment when it comes to deciding the fate of the digital assets.”

In view of this ambiguous situation, we approached some of the most likely companies that you’ll have entrusted with your online assets.

What happens to your online accounts when you die: Facebook

We asked Facebook about what happens to the online presence when the account holder dies and were told that two options are available. Either the account can be deleted or it can be memorialised.

Here is Facebook’s description of this latter option. “In the memorialised state, sensitive information such as status updates and contact information is removed from the profile, while privacy settings on the account are changed so that only confirmed, existing friends can see the profile or locate it in Facebook’s internal search engine. The wall remains so friends and family – who are already friends with the profile – can leave posts in remembrance. When memorialised, no one can log in to the profile.”

Needless to say, deletion or memorialisation both require proof of death and can be requested only by someone who can prove that they have authority to act on behalf of the deceased.

Facebook maintains an archive of every account which contains a copy of everything that has ever been uploaded to it. The account holder is able to download this archive so we asked what the procedure was for a relative or someone holding a grant of probate to access the archive. We were told that this isn’t possible because it would represent a breach of privacy.

While Facebook allows verified relatives to memorialise the account, they can only see information that the deceased had chosen to share with them. Facebook said it would not be appropriate to enable them to download that person’s private messages once they are deceased because no permission had been given. The company would not tell us whether they would respect someone’s wishes had they bequeathed their online assets in their will.

There is every indication that this isn’t just rhetoric and that Facebook takes the issue of the privacy of deceased account holders very seriously. In a high profile case a few months ago, the parents of a 15 year old who had committed suicide had hoped that by accessing their son’s Facebook account they would be able understand better why he had taken his life. Yet, Facebook fought all attempts by the parents to gain access, even after they had obtained a court order.

Next page: Twitter, Google and Apple