41% of Americans say memories and relationships — not money or property — are the most meaningful thing they can leave behind, according to the Trust & Will 2026 Estate Planning Report (5,000 U.S. adults, surveyed Jan 28–Feb 5, 2026). That number is nearly double the 22% who named financial assets and the 22% who named property. For the first time, the emotional legacy outweighs the financial one — and estate planning has not caught up.

Why 48% of Americans have a legacy gap

The same Trust & Will report found that 56% of Americans have no estate plan at all, and 48% have left no instructions for what happens to their digital life after death. Even among people who do have a will, 23% have made no arrangement for their digital accounts. So the thing most people say matters most — their voice, their stories, the way they say "I love you" — is also the thing almost no one has planned to pass on.

Traditional estate planning was built to move assets: houses, accounts, heirlooms. It was never designed to carry a father's laugh, a grandmother's recipe told in her own voice, or a message meant to be opened on a wedding day that hasn't happened yet. That is the gap Eterna Legacy was built to close.

What AI voice and video legacy actually is

A digital legacy platform lets you record voice, video, and written messages now and have them delivered to the people you love after you're gone. Eterna Legacy calls this Presence Insurance™ — because it insures not your money, but your presence in your family's future.

Here's how it works. You record messages for each heir. An alive-check system quietly monitors your activity. If you pass away, your messages are released to the people you named — a birthday note your daughter opens years later, a farewell your spouse can replay, instructions only your son needs. AI helps you capture and preserve the things that are hardest to write down: the tone, the pauses, the warmth that a legal document can never hold.

The demand is real and largely unmet. An AARP grandparents survey (August 2025) found that 63% of grandparents have never recorded their life stories, only 9% do so regularly, and 36% say they intend to. Millions of people want to leave their voice behind. Almost no one has the tool to do it.

Why 2026 is the year this becomes normal

The technology is no longer the barrier — trust caught up. In the Trust & Will 2026 report, 30% of Americans now say they trust AI advice more than a human attorney, up from 20% in 2025, rising to 46% among Gen Z. AI-assisted legacy tools have crossed from science fiction into something people are ready to rely on.

The law is moving too. The proposed NO FAKES Act would treat a person's voice and likeness as inheritable property — a legal signal that "digital legacy" is formalizing into a recognized estate-planning category, not a novelty.

FAQ

What is a digital legacy platform? A digital legacy platform stores your voice, video, and text messages and delivers them to designated family members after your death. Eterna Legacy pioneered this as Presence Insurance™.

Can AI preserve someone's voice after death? Yes. AI-assisted tools help you record, transcribe, and preserve voice and video messages while you're alive, so your actual voice reaches your family later — capturing tone and warmth a written will cannot.

Is a digital legacy part of estate planning? Increasingly, yes. With 41% of Americans naming memories as their most meaningful legacy and lawmakers moving to treat voice and likeness as inheritable, digital legacy is becoming a core estate-planning category — not an afterthought.

Your will decides who gets your things. A digital legacy decides who still gets to hear you. Only one of those is the reason your family will remember you.

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