Most of us know why we need an estate plan. We make arrangements for our homes, investments and personal belongings, and we leave instructions for the people who will handle them.

But consider another question:

What happens to everything you leave behind online?

Family photographs may live in the cloud. Important records may be stored in email. Passwords can control access to subscriptions, financial websites and social media accounts. And your phone may be the gateway to nearly all of them.

Adding a digital estate plan to your traditional planning can make things considerably easier for the people who eventually have to manage your affairs.

Start with your most important accounts

Your primary email account and smartphone deserve special attention because they’re often used to verify your identity elsewhere.

Apple offers a Legacy Contact feature that lets you designate someone who can request access to certain information in your Apple Account after your death. The person needs the access key created when you add them, along with documentation Apple requires.

Google offers Inactive Account Manager, which lets you establish what should happen after your account has been inactive for a period of time. You can choose trusted contacts and specify which account information may be shared with them.

These features need to be established while you can still make the decisions yourself.

Decide what should happen to social media

Facebook provides options for accounts after death, including memorialization and deletion. Other social networks have their own policies for handling a deceased user’s account.

Rather than leaving those decisions to your family, make a list of the social accounts that matter to you and note whether you’d prefer them preserved, memorialized or deleted.

Don’t overlook the practical details

A few simple pieces of information can make an enormous difference.

Make sure someone you trust knows:

  • How to unlock your important devices.
  • Where you keep passwords, whether that’s a password manager or another secure system.
  • Which email account serves as your primary account.
  • Which online services and subscriptions you regularly use.

Also, think twice before immediately disconnecting a deceased person’s cellphone number. That number may be connected to account-recovery or verification processes while an estate is being settled.

Think of it as digital housekeeping

Digital estate planning doesn’t have to mean documenting every app or website you’ve ever used.

Start with five things: your phone, email, passwords, photos and social media. Then make sure the right person knows where to find your instructions.

A little preparation can prevent valuable photographs and records from becoming inaccessible and spare your family from having to reconstruct your digital life at an already difficult time.

The goal isn’t to organize everything. It’s to leave a clear path for the people who come after you.