Anyone who wishes to manage a loved one\u2019s emails, photos, social media accounts, and crypto wallet after their death will find that Belgian law currently lacks specific provisions on this matter. The European Law Institute\u2019s Model Rules on Succession and Access to Digital Remains therefore propose that economic digital assets be governed by ordinary inheritance law and that personal digital data be subject to a separate, temporary right of access that does not transfer ownership. The instrument was approved by the ELI Council on June 24, 2026, by the members on July 16, 2026, and published on August 28, 2026. It is not a law, but a blueprint for European and national legislators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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In Belgium, Book 4 of the Civil Code<\/a> (BW) Succession. Article 4.3 of the BW provides that the heirs designated by law automatically take possession of the decedent\u2019s property, rights, and legal claims. A subscription, cloud storage service, or social media account is, legally speaking, a contract with a service provider. According to the letter of Article 4.3 of the Civil Code, the contractual rights associated with that account therefore pass to the heirs, unless the contract is inextricably linked to the person of the deceased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In practice, it\u2019s not that simple. Virtually every platform stipulates in its terms of service that the account is personal and non-transferable, that it will be closed or set to memorial status upon the user\u2019s death, and that surviving relatives can, at most, request its deletion. An heir who sends a death certificate and a certificate of inheritance to a U.S. service provider is often asked to provide certified translations and then receives a standard refusal. In such cases, the contract dictates the fate of the estate, not inheritance law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There's a second problem as well. The General Data Protection Regulation<\/a> (GDPR) explicitly protects only living individuals in Recital 27, and leaves it up to the member states to establish rules regarding the data of deceased persons. France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have done so. Belgium has not: the Act of July 30, 2018, on the Protection of Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data<\/a> does not contain any provision regarding the personal data of deceased individuals. Upon death, the Belgian data subject is therefore no longer covered by data protection, while the people with whom he corresponded remain protected as usual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A third obstacle is the confidentiality of communications. Article 124 of the Act of June 13, 2005, on Electronic Communications<\/a> prohibits anyone from intentionally accessing electronically transmitted information that is not personally intended for them, without the consent of all persons involved. An heir who reads through the email inbox of a deceased parent is reading messages addressed to that parent, not to him. No Belgian court has yet ruled on whether he needs the consent of each sender to do so. We discussed these questions earlier in the blog. Can heirs access the deceased's digital accounts?<\/a>; the answer has not become any clearer since 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The European Law Institute is an independent European research institute that drafts model laws and principles for European and national legislators. The Model Rules on Succession and Access to Digital Remains<\/a> were drafted by a project team led by Edina Harbinja and Antoine Eigenmann and consist of eleven articles with commentary. They are intended to be incorporated into national legislation or to serve as a starting point for a European initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key concept is the \u201cdigital remain.\u201d A digital remain is any item in digital form to which the deceased had a right, or any digital record of a right or interest that he held during his lifetime, whether held directly or through an intermediary (Article 2, paragraph 1). This includes the contents of an account, as well as files on the deceased\u2019s own laptop or hard drive. Databases maintained by third parties for their own purposes\u2014such as a hospital\u2019s patient records or a bank\u2019s customer files\u2014are outside the scope of this provision, as the deceased held only the rights of a data subject with respect to such databases (Article 1, paragraph 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within that framework, the model rules distinguish between two categories. A digital asset is a digital remnant that is subject to control, enjoyment, or use and that can be transferred, regardless of whether the underlying right is a property right, a contractual right, or any other right (Article 2, paragraph 2). A personal digital remnant is a digital remnant that, by its nature or function, reflects the personality, identity, or private life of the deceased or is inextricably linked thereto, including the deceased\u2019s personal data and digital representations that can evoke or mimic the deceased\u2019s likeness, voice, presence, or behavior, including through generative systems (Article 2, paragraph 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n For digital assets, Article 4 opts for what the drafters call \u201csuccession neutrality\u201d: the inheritance law that applies to movable property, with the adjustments required by their digital nature. A balance in a Revolut account, the private keys to a crypto wallet, a registered domain name, or a YouTube channel generating ad revenue will therefore pass to the heirs just as a savings account or a work of art would. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The service provider is subject to three obligations in this regard: to provide mechanisms to enable the transfer, to provide clear and enforceable tools or platform rules, and to give timely notice upon termination of the service so that the representatives of the estate can export the assets in a commonly used format (Article 4, paragraph 2). Anyone who is not a service provider but does control the device\u2014for example, an employer with a company laptop on which the deceased stored personal files\u2014must enable the transfer of those files without having to hand over the device (Article 4, paragraph 4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most significant provision is Article 4, paragraph 3. Any clause in the terms and conditions that prevents or hinders the transfer of digital assets is invalid, unless it was individually negotiated with the deceased. The burden of proof for such a negotiation lies with the service provider. For a platform with hundreds of millions of users and a single set of terms of service, that proof is impossible to provide in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Personal digital assets are not inheritable. The heir does not become the owner of his mother\u2019s email account, and certainly not of the chatbot that mimics her voice. Instead, there is a right of access. The right of access is the right to consult, use, disclose, have preserved, correct, obtain a copy of, transfer, and delete the contents of personal digital remains (Article 2, paragraph 6). It is therefore broader than merely viewing the content, but it remains a right to the content itself\u2014not a right to act in the deceased\u2019s stead or to continue operating the account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The deceased\u2019s wishes take precedence. During his or her lifetime, the deceased may stipulate that all or some of his or her personal digital remains be deleted after death (Article 5), he may designate one or more persons authorized to exercise the right of access, and he may exclude or restrict access for certain heirs, provided that such exclusion is specific and clearly identifies the data in question (Article 7, paragraphs 3 and 4). These instructions may be included in a will, in the platform\u2019s own estate planning tool, or in a written statement to the service provider. In the event of conflicting instructions, the most recent one prevails, provided that its date can be reasonably established (Article 8, paragraph 2). The platform may rely on the most recent instruction in its own tool, unless it is notified of a later instruction within six months of the death (Article 8, paragraph 3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the decedent has not made any provisions, the right of access is granted to the statutory heirs in the case of an intestate estate, to the general legatees in the case of a will, and to the executor or the administrator of the estate (Article 7, paragraph 1). Two choices stand out. Specific legatees, who receive only a specific item, are deliberately excluded to prevent someone who inherits a painting from also being able to read the private correspondence associated with it. And the State, which in Belgium can claim an unclaimed estate, never gains access to personal digital remains (Article 7, paragraph 1, b). The drafters aim to prevent intimate archives from falling into the hands of the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there are multiple beneficiaries, none of them may unilaterally delete or modify the information. If one of them unreasonably refuses to give consent, the others may ask the court to make a decision in lieu of that consent (Article 7, paragraph 7). For two children who cannot agree on their father\u2019s Facebook profile, this offers a concrete solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The model rules establish two time periods. During the first five years following death, the service provider must retain the deceased\u2019s personal digital assets, unless the deceased had requested their deletion or the beneficiaries request it (Article 9, paragraph 1). Starting in the fifth year, the service provider may delete the data, unless a beneficiary has requested continued retention or a third party has filed a legitimate claim (Article 9, paragraph 2). Ten years after death, the right of access expires permanently (Article 6, paragraph 3). During those ten years, the platform may not charge a fee for exercising the right of access or for storage (Article 6, paragraph 4). Here, too, platform terms that impede access or the implementation of the directives are invalid unless individually negotiated (Article 6, paragraph 5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Digital life rarely fits neatly into two categories. An iCloud account contains business documents, family photos, and private messages all at the same time. A single draft manuscript can be a copyrighted work while also containing sensitive medical information about the author and a living relative. For such mixed cases, Article 3 establishes a priority rule: first, the access regime is applied to the personal layer; only then does the asset pass to the heirs under inheritance law. The beneficiaries can therefore first remove the medical passages, after which the copyright to the manuscript passes to the heirs for publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the personal element is merely incidental, that intermediate step is skipped. The example given in the commentary is a domain name for which the registration system contains the name, address, and phone number of the deceased: these administrative details do not alter the economic nature of the asset, and the laws of inheritance apply immediately (Article 3, paragraph 2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to copyright, this is consistent with Belgium\u2019s existing legislation. According to Article XI.166 of the Code of Economic Law<\/a> (WER) Copyright continues for seventy years after the author\u2019s death for the benefit of the person designated by the author or, in the absence of such a designation, for the benefit of the author\u2019s heirs. Article XI.171 WER adds that moral rights are also exercised by the heirs or legatees after the author\u2019s death, unless the author has designated someone else for that purpose. Under Belgian law, an unpublished novel stored on a hard drive is therefore already considered an inheritable asset; the model rules do not change this, but they do introduce a privacy filter before the work is exploited. Our page on copyright<\/a> further explains property rights and moral rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The authors call them \u201cdeadbots\u201d or \u201cghostbots\u201d: chatbots trained on the messages, voice, and images of a deceased person that continue to converse with the bereaved as if the person were still alive. Article 2, paragraph 3, subparagraph b explicitly classifies such digital representations as personal digital remains. A deadbot, therefore, cannot be inherited. The beneficiaries of the right of access may retain or delete it, but they do not acquire the right to commercially exploit the likeness of the deceased or to impersonate the deceased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is consistent with Belgian portrait rights law. Article XI.174 of the WER provides that no one may reproduce a portrait or communicate it to the public without the consent of the person portrayed or, for a period of twenty years following that person\u2019s death, without the consent of his or her successors in title. The Belgian right to image<\/a> So the person survives for two decades, and an AI replica that uses his face is a reproduction of that portrait. In addition, Article 50 of the AI Regulation<\/a> Anyone who distributes synthetic images, audio, or video of a real person is subject to a duty of transparency, even when it is a parody, as we explained in the blog Should you label a deepfake if it's clearly a parody?<\/a>. Our overview of the legal framework for artificial intelligence<\/a> puts those obligations into context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emails and chats always have at least two authors. Article 10 therefore also grants rights to third parties. Anyone who demonstrates a legitimate interest\u2014for example, through ongoing legal proceedings or a contractual obligation\u2014may request access to the content from the heir or beneficiary. Conversely, anyone who demonstrates that continued access or retention infringes upon their rights may request the removal of the content or a restriction on access. If the heir refuses, and if the retention would seriously and disproportionately infringe upon the third party\u2019s rights, the third party may contact the platform directly; the platform must provide a written justification, and its decision is subject to judicial review (Article 10, paragraph 3). Furthermore, the processing of third-party data by the heirs remains subject to the GDPR as soon as it goes beyond purely personal or household use (Article 10, paragraph 4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n With regard to private international law, the model rules deliberately adopt a cautious approach. They do not contain their own conflict-of-laws rules and do not affect existing instruments (Article 11). Who inherits the digital assets is determined by the Succession Regulation<\/a>, as a general rule, the law of the last habitual residence. The contract with the platform, however, remains governed by the law selected in the terms of use, in accordance with the Rome I Regulation<\/a>, and the choice of forum generally remains valid under the Brussels Ibis Regulation<\/a>. A consumer\u2019s heirs do, however, retain the consumer protection provided by Article 6 of Rome I and Article 17 of Brussels Ibis, so that they may file a lawsuit in their own court. The commentary itself acknowledges that this choice does not extend the protection afforded to heirs and that mandatory referral rules may be desirable in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat the model rules actually entail<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Regime 1: Inheriting Digital Assets as Personal Property<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Regime Two: A Right of Access That Does Not Transfer Ownership<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Five years of storage, ten years of access, no fees<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Miscellaneous Cases: A Manuscript Containing Medical Information<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The AI replica of the deceased<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Third Parties and Cross-Border Cases<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Legal analysis and interpretation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Does the right of access conflict with the Belgian tradition of diaries and letters?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n