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

Every account falls into roughly the same pattern: someone wants proof of death and proof that you're the right person to be asking, usually a death certificate plus either a role in the estate (executor, administrator) or being a joint owner on the account already. What varies is how strict each one is about it, and what you actually get at the end, closure, content, or nothing at all.

Banks are the most procedural and the most consistent about it: a death certificate and documentation of your authority (letters testamentary, a small-estate affidavit, or joint ownership) is usually enough to close an account or release funds, though the exact form varies by state and bank. The part worth planning around isn't the paperwork, it's the timing, notify before you've gathered account details and a plan, and the account can freeze before autopay gets rerouted.

Email providers split into two different processes that get confused often: requesting the account be closed, and requesting access to what's in it. Google's path for the latter (Inactive Account Manager aside) requires a formal legal process and doesn't guarantee access even with a death certificate in hand; it's designed to protect the account, not hand it over. Yahoo has a similar deceased-user request form, and the realistic outcome across most providers is closure, not a mailbox full of Grandma's inbox.

Facebook and Instagram offer memorialization instead of straight deletion: submit proof of death, and the account gets a "Remembering" banner and stops showing up in ways that would feel jarring (birthday reminders, "suggested friend"). If the person set up a legacy contact in advance, that person can manage the memorialized page; otherwise family can only request memorialization or removal, not login access.

The long tail, streaming subscriptions, a dating app, a loyalty program, rarely has a formal deceased-user process at all. The practical approach isn't hunting down every service individually; it's working from a bank or credit card statement to see what's actually still charging, and canceling from there. That's 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.