What families should do with online accounts, subscriptions, social media, and digital assets after someone dies. Honest, practical, and in the right order.
After someone dies, it may feel natural to try logging into their phone, email, or social media accounts. Guessing passwords, bypassing security, or accessing accounts without proper authority can create legal and privacy complications. Gather documents and confirm who has legal authority to manage the estate before taking action.
Physical devices are the key to almost everything. Before anything else, locate and safely store every device the deceased owned. Do not reset, erase, sell, or give away any device until important information has been reviewed and preserved.
Every platform, bank, and institution you contact will ask for documentation. Gathering these once saves you from repeating the process for every account. Get multiple certified copies of the death certificate — many institutions keep originals.
The goal at this stage is not to access everything — it is to understand what exists. Most families discover accounts they never knew about. The email inbox is the most complete record of every digital relationship a person ever had.
If you have email access, search for these terms to surface almost every account:
If you only have bank statements, every recurring charge identifies a paid subscription — even without email access.
Many families lose access to photos, videos, messages, and documents because they wait too long. Digital memories can be permanently lost if subscriptions lapse, accounts are auto-deleted, or devices are wiped before content is preserved.
Subscriptions continue charging after death. The average person has $200–300 in monthly subscriptions at the time of death. Identifying and cancelling these stops ongoing charges to the estate and prevents unnecessary financial loss.
Pull 2–3 months of bank and credit card statements and flag every recurring charge. Then prioritize:
Every major platform handles deceased accounts differently. Do not rush this decision — social media profiles often contain photos, memories, and connections that matter to the family. There is no universal right answer between memorializing and removing.
Digital financial assets are often overlooked and can represent significant recoverable value. These require proper executor documentation but are recoverable through formal estate processes — unlike self-custody cryptocurrency without seed phrases.
Not every account has the same purpose. Treating all digital accounts the same — closing everything quickly or preserving everything indefinitely — creates problems. Each account category requires a different kind of decision.
Vera Legacy is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. There are situations where a qualified estate or probate attorney is necessary — not optional. If any of the following apply, consult an attorney before proceeding.
The best time to organize a digital estate is before a crisis. If you are reading this while managing a loved one's accounts, you are already experiencing firsthand why this matters. A basic digital estate plan takes less than two hours to create and saves your family weeks of difficulty.
A complete digital estate plan includes:
Every platform has a different bereavement process, different documents, different timelines. Vera Legacy researches every account, prepares every executor letter, and delivers a complete documentation package in 48 hours — so you submit, not search.
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