“Aiden, do you think Mom is watching us right now?”
The question came so suddenly. Noah stood by the window, looking up at the sky — which had just shifted into a soft shade of blue, Amelia’s favorite color, reminding her of the freedom of the open sky.
Aiden choked up. “I think she’s right here,” he said softly, tapping his chest. “Always here.” They stood inside her house — now quiet, without the music and laughter Amelia used to fill it with. A mother, a widow, a woman who kept everything in perfect order.
A woman who got almost everything right.
The will was found — neatly printed, tied with a lavender ribbon, and kept in a drawer. Her late husband, Daniel, had asked her to promise to write a will after he was diagnosed with cancer. “Don’t let our boys end up in a mess, Mel,” he had said softly at the time, “even if you still feel young.” And she kept that promise.
She made a will. She named Noah’s guardian. She listed her assets. She allocated the insurance money. She thought of everything… except for one thing. She forgot about her digital life.
Two weeks later, Aiden sat across from the estate planner. Before he even spoke, his voice had already cracked. “She wrote a will. She did her best. I could see how hard she tried to prepare everything. But…”
The estate planner leaned forward, fingers interlaced. “Tell me what’s missing.”
Aiden let out a long breath. “Everything else.”
Her banking app needed a password. The phone number linked to her two-factor authentication had been terminated. Her cryptocurrency wallet — gone. On her MacBook, there was a folder named “Noah Fund,” set up for scheduled transfers to an online savings platform, but no one could log in.
Her small online shop selling digital art prints? Orders were still coming in, payments were still being processed. But every account was now frozen. Her PayPal, Shopee Pay, Touch ’n Go e-wallet — no one had the login details.
And the worst part — “She had a cloud drive,” Aiden said, his voice trembling. “She said she wanted to save everything for Noah. Photos, videos, letters. She called it the ‘Memory Box.’ But now… it’s encrypted. We can see the folder, but we can’t open it.”
The estate planner’s expression softened. “She didn’t include her digital assets in the will?” Aiden shook his head.
“She thought having a will was enough.”
Noah discovered that the money in the bank couldn’t be accessed immediately — even though it was her account, they still had to wait for probate. The cryptocurrency wallet she prepared for his university fund might be lost forever without the recovery phrase. And the monthly automatic tuition payments were stuck in an app they couldn’t log into.
He didn’t cry. At least not that day. He just sat there, his fists clenched so tightly they turned white, and whispered, “She promised… she said everything was ready.”
And she really had prepared. Amelia did what most people never do — she planned ahead for her passing. But no one ever told her that the law does not automatically grant access to digital assets. Unless a will explicitly includes digital assets, appoints a custodian, records where they are stored, and leaves the necessary passwords, your online life becomes a locked museum — untouchable, inaccessible, and eventually forgotten.
“Mr. Aiden,” the estate planner later said as he handed him a booklet, “this isn’t just about memories. Digital assets are also property, ownership, identity. People think that once they write a will, everything is taken care of — but if cloud assets aren’t included, they’ve only done half the job.”
Aiden stared at the photo of his sister on the booklet — the joyful mother with her arms wrapped around her son.
“She left everything behind,” he whispered, “just not the keys.”
The room fell silent.
The estate planner nodded. “It’s painful. But now you can make sure no one else has to go through this — for Noah, and for the people you care about.”
That day, something changed.
Late that night, Aiden sat with a cup of tea gone cold and his notebook, listing every account he could think of: banking apps, crypto wallets, email, cloud storage—even subscription services. He wrote down passwords, backup codes, legacy contacts, and then dialed the estate planner’s number.
“I want to update my will,” he said. “This time, I want to include the part of me no one ever sees.”
Just like what Noah experienced, managing digital assets should be done under the guidance of a professional estate planner — someone who can provide practical advice on protecting sensitive information while ensuring that passwords do not fall into the wrong hands.
Estate planning is not merely listing names and account numbers — it is about ensuring that the people you love can inherit properly within a legal framework, find comfort amid emotional loss, and move forward despite real-world challenges. Because in this era, your life story is no longer locked inside a metal box under the bed, but lives inside encrypted hard drives, unread emails, automatic payments in e-wallets, and the last login records of your social media accounts.
When the story of a life reaches its final full stop, those who remain deserve more than silence — they need access, they need the keys to unlock encrypted memories, and they need to fully receive every piece of love and intention you meant to leave behind for them.
About Rockwills International Group
Rockwills International Group, now in its 30th year, pioneered professional will-writing in 1995 and has since grown into the nation’s leading asset planning specialist. Today, it is the largest provider of solutions and support services in the areas of trusts, inheritance, administration, and wealth distribution. The Group has prepared more than 320,000 wills and has over 200,000 executor and trustee appointments, managing more than RM 25 billion in trust assets.