How to Close a Deceased Person's Bank and Online Accounts

Every account follows roughly the same pattern. Someone wants proof of death. They also want proof you're the right person to be asking. That usually means a death certificate, plus proof of your role: executor, administrator, or joint owner on the account already. What varies is how strict each company is. What you get at the end varies too: closure, content, or nothing at all.

Banks are the most procedural, and the most consistent. A death certificate is usually enough to close an account or release funds. You'll also need proof of your authority: letters testamentary, a small-estate affidavit, or joint ownership. The exact form varies by state and bank. The part worth planning around isn't the paperwork. It's the timing. Notify the bank too early, before you've gathered account details and a plan, and the account can freeze. Then autopay has nowhere to reroute.

Email providers split into two processes people often confuse: closing the account, and getting access to what's inside it. Google's path for access (Inactive Account Manager aside) requires a formal legal process. It doesn't guarantee access, even with a death certificate in hand. It's built to protect the account, not hand it over. Yahoo has a similar deceased-user request form. Across most providers, the realistic outcome is closure, not a mailbox full of someone's old messages. Google's own support page backs this up. Inactive Account Manager can share data or notify someone after you're gone. It's not the same as guaranteed account access for family.

Facebook and Instagram offer memorialization instead of straight deletion. Submit proof of death, and the account gets a "Remembering" banner. It stops showing up in jarring ways, like birthday reminders or "suggested friend." If the person set up a legacy contact in advance, that contact can manage the memorialized page. Otherwise, family can only request memorialization or removal, not login access. Meta explains this directly. Memorializing an account keeps it as the person left it. It's not a handover. Nobody gets login access just by asking.

The long tail (streaming subscriptions, a dating app, a loyalty program) rarely has a formal deceased-user process at all. Don't hunt down every service one by one. Instead, work from a bank or credit card statement to see what's still charging, then cancel from there. This is also the strongest argument for writing down which services exist before any of this is needed. Nobody can cancel a subscription they don't know is running.