The role people call a digital executor
"Digital executor" is the name that has stuck for whoever makes sure the digital part of an estate is actually found. It is not a legal status in Belgium. Belgian law knows the executor named in a will, the exécuteur testamentaire, and nothing beyond that. A digital executor is a practical arrangement you put in place yourself, informally with someone you trust or through a service like this one. The difference between the two roles is worth reading before you decide which you need.
Here, that arrangement is: your own accounts, set to notify the people you chose, a written note, and a contact address your family can use. Nakamoto.be is not appointed to anything, holds nothing, and takes no decision about who inherits.
Google Inactive Account Manager
This is the mechanism that does what people expect it to do. Inside your Google account you nominate up to ten trusted contacts, set an inactivity period of three, six, twelve or eighteen months, and choose which of your data each contact is allowed to download. Google warns you first, by email and by text. If you do not respond, your contacts are notified.
It works from an email address alone, which is why it is the place to start.
One correction worth reading twice. The recovery email address is the wrong field for this. Recovery addresses exist so that a password can be reset, so whoever is listed there can take the account over at any moment, including while you are alive and perfectly well. Never put a third party in that field. Inactive Account Manager is a separate setting, and it is the correct one.
Apple Legacy Contact
Apple's mechanism is real, but it works differently, and any page treating the two as equivalent will send you down a path that does not work.
An Apple legacy contact needs an Apple ID of their own. Access then requires an access key generated at the moment you set it up, together with a death certificate. An email address on its own is not enough.
The sensible arrangement for Apple is therefore a different shape. Nominate a real person you know, usually a partner or an adult child, then solve the part that actually goes wrong: storing the access key somewhere that will still exist and still be findable in ten years. That is where the help is worth having.
The written note
Separate from any account setting, one page on paper. What exists, roughly where it is held, and where the backup lives. Never the seed phrase itself. The Digital Asset Inventory page covers what belongs on it and what does not.
Multisig, where it fits
If the holdings justify the effort, a multisig arrangement shared among people you already trust removes the single point of failure without bringing in anyone from outside your own circle. It takes real work to set up and real discipline to maintain, and it is the right answer less often than the internet suggests.
What is held here
Nothing.
No key, no seed phrase, no wallet, no funds. Not now, and not under any later arrangement. What exists is a contact address and a register entry recording who to contact when that address is used.
The address you nominate
The contact you nominate is an opaque alias in the form [email protected], rather than anything carrying your name.
There is a reason for that. Google's notification emails contain the address, and so does whatever your family forwards around afterwards. An address with a name in it tells everyone who ever sees that thread who you were and what you held.
What happens when the notification arrives
- A notification arrives from Google for the alias.
- The alias is looked up, and the identity of the deceased is confirmed against the register.
- The person you named at setup as the family contact is called.
- The death certificate and the name of the notary are requested.
- The work happens with the notary, not around them.
- What gets handed over is guidance. Never assets, because none are held.
Step three is the one that matters. An intermediary who picks which family member receives access to a dead person's data has stepped into a decision that was never theirs to make. The register records at setup exactly who to contact, and after that, entitlement is for the notary to confirm.
If that contact cannot be reached
One person at the other end of an arrangement like this is a single point of failure, and it fails quietly at precisely the moment it is needed. The setup therefore names a second person as well, agreed with you when the arrangement is made.
What this is not
- No custody. No keys, seed phrases, wallets or funds are held at any point.
- No legal, tax or investment advice. Succession law and inheritance tax belong to your notary and your adviser.
- No promise of recovery. A seed phrase that is genuinely gone is gone. Nothing can change that, and anyone who tells you otherwise is worth walking away from.
- No decision about who inherits. That is settled by the law and by the notary.
Getting started
A setup session runs through your own accounts with you, in whatever order suits them, and ends with the register entry and the written note. Nothing leaves the room with us.
Get in touch to arrange one. If you have arrived here after a death rather than before one, start at urgent assistance instead.