Here's the thing nobody warns you about: weeks after a funeral, a birthday reminder pops up for someone who's gone. Or their profile suggests you tag them in a photo. It's a gut-punch, and it happens because their accounts are still just sitting there, running on autopilot.
You don't have to leave them that way. Each platform handles a deceased person's account a little differently, and the good news is you generally have two choices: turn the account into a memorial, or close it entirely. Here's the plain version of how each one works.
Facebook and Instagram
Meta gives you two paths, and the right one depends on what your loved one would have wanted.
- Memorialize it. The account stays up with the word "Remembering" above their name. Everything they shared stays visible under the privacy settings they had, and friends can still post memories. You request this through Facebook's memorialization request form, and you'll need a link to the profile plus proof of death — an obituary or death certificate usually does it.
- Close it. If you'd rather the account come down, you'll submit a special request to remove it. For that one, Facebook asks for proof of death and proof that you're an immediate family member or the estate's executor.
One thing worth knowing: if your loved one named a legacy contact ahead of time, that person can manage the memorialized profile — pin a post, update the photos. They can't read messages or log in. Nobody can. So if you were hoping to get into their inbox, that door stays closed by design.
Google (Gmail, Photos, YouTube)
Google is where a lot of the important stuff actually lives — email, photos, documents. If your person set up Inactive Account Manager before they died, Google may have already emailed a trusted contact with access to whatever data they chose to share. That's the smooth path.
If they didn't set it up, you can submit a request to Google to close the account or, in some cases, request data from it. Be patient here — it's a slower, more manual review, and Google doesn't promise access to contents.
Apple
Apple works through a Legacy Contact, and this is the one people wish they'd known about sooner. If your loved one added you as their Legacy Contact, you'll need the access key they generated plus a copy of the death certificate to reach their photos, messages, and files. Without that key set up in advance, getting into an Apple account is genuinely hard — often it takes a court order.
What to Do Next
- Make a short list of every account you know about — Facebook, Instagram, Gmail, Apple, LinkedIn, anything else.
- For each one, decide: memorialize or close. There's no wrong answer, and no rush.
- Gather your documents once — a death certificate and proof you're family or executor cover most requests.
- Handle the accounts holding real assets first (email, cloud storage), then the social profiles.
- Check whether a legacy or trusted contact was already named before you file anything from scratch.
If tracking all of this feels like one more thing on an already impossible list, that's exactly what our worksheets are for. The Digital Accounts & Passwords Worksheet gives you one place to log every account, its status, and what's left to do — so nothing slips through while you're grieving. It's part of the Estate bundle at lumeway.co.
You can grieve and still cross things off the list. Both are allowed.
This post is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, financial, or tax advice. Platform policies, forms, and processing times change over time — confirm current requirements directly with each service before you file. Access to a deceased person's accounts and data varies by platform and by law, so consult an attorney or the estate's professional advisors for guidance specific to your situation.