What Happens to Social Media Accounts After Death: A Canadian Guide
When someone dies, their social media and online accounts do not simply disappear. Each platform has its own rules about what happens next, and it's those rules — not the Will — that decide who can do what. Some platforms allow a person to nominate someone in advance to manage the account if they are no longer alive. Most do not, and leave the family to make a request afterwards with a death certificate.
The short answer: four major platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Google and Apple — let someone decide in advance what should happen to their account if they pass away. For other platforms, someone must submit a request after the death, and usually results in either memorialization or closure of the account. No major social media platform hands over the deceased person's login, to anyone, under any circumstances.
The distinction that matters: planning ahead versus asking afterwards
Every platform below falls into one of two groups, and the difference decides how much control someone actually has.
Platforms that allow advance designation. Facebook, Instagram, Google and Apple each let an account holder name a specific person, in advance, from inside their account settings. That nomination is made and sits dormant until it is needed.
Platforms that only accept an after-the-fact request. On other popular platforms, nothing can be set up in advance. When the person dies, a family member or estate representative submits a request, usually with a death certificate and proof of relationship, and the platform decides what to do. The most common outcomes are memorialization of the account or removal from the platform.
The best practical advice is to set up Facebook, Instagram, Google and Apple using the settings that those platforms offer, and leave clear written instructions for the rest.
What happens to a Facebook account when someone dies?
Facebook offers two outcomes when someone dies: the profile is memorialized, or it is permanently deleted. A memorialized profile stays visible, with "Remembering" shown beside the name, and existing content remains where the privacy settings originally put it.
Facebook allows advance designation. An account holder aged 18 or over can name a legacy contact in advance, from within account settings. It applies to the main profile only, not to additional profiles, and it can be changed or removed at any time.
A legacy contact can:
write a pinned post on the memorialized profile, such as a funeral notice or a message of thanks
change the profile picture and cover photo
respond to new friend requests
request that the account be removed altogether
download a copy of the shared content, if the account holder enabled that option in advance
A legacy contact cannot:
log into the account
read the person's private messages
remove friends, or send new friend requests
People are often surprised by these limitations. Naming a legacy contact does not hand someone the account. It only gives them a narrow set of caretaking powers over a memorial page, and nothing more.
What happens to an Instagram account after death?
Instagram, also operated by Meta, memorializes an account once it receives a valid request. A memorialized Instagram profile:
cannot be logged into by anyone
shows the word "Remembering" beside the person's name
keeps the posts, photos and videos in place, visible to the audience they were originally shared with
stops appearing in certain places, such as Explore
Instagram allows advance designation, and this is the part most people miss. From Accounts Centre, under Personal details → Account ownership and control → Memorialization, an account holder can name a legacy contact, or instead choose Delete after death — in which case the profile is deleted rather than memorialized. The legacy contact can be changed at any time, and turning off Delete after death requires naming a legacy contact instead.
There is a real consequence to doing nothing: a memorialized profile with no legacy contact cannot be changed at all. Not the photos or videos, not the comments on them, not the privacy settings, not the profile photo or the follower list. Whatever state the account was in is the state it stays in.
Because deletion cannot be reversed, Instagram itself suggests discussing the Delete after death choice with family before selecting it — which is exactly the conversation an estate plan is for.
What happens to a Gmail or Google account after someone dies?
Google covers a great deal of a person's digital life in one account, and it has the most substantial advance tool of any platform.
Inactive Account Manager lets someone decide, in advance, what happens if the account goes unused for a set period. The account holder chooses how long Google should wait before the plan triggers, and nominates up to ten trusted contacts.
When the waiting period passes, those contacts receive an email written by the account holder in advance, a list of the data types selected for sharing, and a download link for that data — which can include Gmail, Drive, Blogger and YouTube content. Contacts verify by phone before anything can be downloaded, so the data does not simply land in an inbox.
Two details are worth planning around. The trigger is inactivity, not death — nothing happens until the chosen period of silence has elapsed, so a short window means a faster handover and a long one means a delay. And Google notes that accounts inactive for at least two years may be subject to deletion where no plan has been set up, which makes the absence of a plan a decision in itself.
Inactive Account Manager is the single highest-value item on this list, because one single setup can cover email, photographs, documents and videos.
What happens to an Apple account and iCloud after death?
Apple's Legacy Contact feature lets someone nominate one or more people who can request access to the account data after death. More than one legacy contact can be named, and any one of them can act independently.
Setting it up generates an access key, which the legacy contact keeps. After the death, that access key together with a death certificate is what unlocks the request. Legacy contacts must be at least 13 years old, and do not need an Apple account of their own to be named — though they will need a compatible device to receive the access key.
What a legacy contact can reach: photos, messages, notes, files and device backups.
Apple does not make purchased films, music, books or subscriptions available to a Legacy Contact, and its terms state that account and content rights terminate upon death.
What happens to an X or Twitter account when someone dies?
X offers no advance designation. It will work with a person authorized to act on behalf of the estate, or a verified immediate family member, to have the account deactivated.
The request starts a documentation process: X emails instructions asking for information about the deceased, a copy of the requester's identification, and a copy of the death certificate.
X is explicit about its limits: it is unable to provide account access to anyone, regardless of their relationship to the person who died. Deactivation is the only outcome available, and there is no memorialization of the kind Meta offers.
X also has a separate process for incapacity, which is unusual and worth knowing. Where an account holder is incapacitated for medical or other reasons, someone authorized to act on their behalf can request deactivation by supplying identification for both parties and a power of attorney. That is a direct, practical use for the incapacity documents in an estate plan, which are used during someone's lifetime rather than after it.
What happens to a LinkedIn profile after someone passes away?
LinkedIn offers two outcomes, and which one is available depends on the requester's standing.
Anyone can report a member as deceased, and LinkedIn will memorialize the profile. A memorialized profile carries a memorial badge, and existing posts and articles remain readable.
Only someone authorized to act on behalf of the deceased can request that the account be closed. That requires documentation such as a court order appointing an authorized representative.
Once an account is memorialized, access to it is locked. LinkedIn states that it will not disclose usernames or passwords to anyone, including family members, under any circumstances.
There is no advance nomination on LinkedIn. For someone whose professional history, recommendations and client relationships live there, anything worth keeping should be exported while they still can.
What happens to a TikTok or other newer platform account?
TikTok is the clearest gap in the landscape. As of September 2026, a search of TikTok's English help centre for guidance on deceased users returns nothing on the subject — no memorialization policy, no published request process, and no advance setting comparable to a legacy contact.
That does not mean nothing can be done; requests can be raised through TikTok's general support channel. However, there is no documented process to rely on, and no way to arrange anything ahead of time.
The same is broadly true of most newer platforms. Where a platform publishes no policy, written instructions left with the person handling the estate are the only thing that will guide a decision — and for an account with a following or an income attached, that is the weakest point in an otherwise well-organized plan.
What a Canadian Will can — and cannot — direct
This is where most guidance becomes vague, so it is worth being plain about it.
An online account is usually not property in the same way a house or a bank balance is. Digital accounts can involve a mixture of contractual rights, licences, information and property. A Will can give an executor instructions about how digital assets should be handled, but whether an executor can actually access or control a particular account depends on the nature of the asset, the platform's terms and the law that applies in the relevant province.
What a Will can usefully do is different, and still valuable:
Record clear wishes — whether accounts should be memorialized, closed or archived, and whether anything should be preserved for family before removal.
Name someone to carry those wishes out, so the family is not debating it during bereavement.
Deal with the things that genuinely are property. A domain name, a business account, the copyright in photographs or writing, and any balance held in an online account are assets that can be dealt with in a Will, even when the account hosting them cannot be transferred.
Point to where the instructions live, without putting sensitive details in the Will itself.
One practical warning. Leaving a list of passwords in a Will is a poor idea on two counts. A Will can become a public document through the probate process, and using someone else's credentials may breach a platform's terms regardless of family relationship or good intentions. The safer pattern is instructions in the Will and credentials in a password manager or sealed record kept separately, with the executor told where to find it.
The law here is still developing and varies between provinces. In fact, several provinces already have legislation to help bridge the gap and make it easier for executors to administer a deceased person's digital estate. Anyone with a substantial digital estate — a monetized channel, a business account, a body of creative work — may benefit from professional advice alongside an online Will.
Can someone name a digital executor in a Canadian Will?
A "digital executor" is not a separate legal office in Canada. In practice it means either the estate's executor handling digital assets alongside everything else, or a named person in the Will who helps the estate executor carry out the digital instructions.
Naming someone specific is often worth doing because the executor may not have the skills to deal with digital assets. A sibling who may be best placed to administer an estate is not always the person who knows which accounts exist, where the photographs are backed up, or what a two-factor code is. The person named should be told they have been named, and told where the instructions are kept.
What happens to a monetized or creator account after death?
An account that earns money is a different problem, and one almost no platform has answered well.
Revenue that has been earned but not yet paid out is generally an asset of the estate and can be claimed, though the process is slow and evidence-heavy. The account itself usually cannot be inherited. Where a channel or profile is the front end of a real business, the practical protection is structural rather than contractual: the business entity owns the brand and the intellectual property, and the platform account is treated as a distribution channel that may not survive.
Anyone in this position should record what the accounts are, what they earn, where the payouts land, and who should be contacted.
What someone can put in place now
Use the available advance planning features. Facebook legacy contact, Instagram legacy contact (or Delete after death), Google Inactive Account Manager, and Apple Legacy Contact. Perhaps twenty minutes in total, and they provide some certainty and control.
Write down which accounts exist, without passwords — the list itself is the part families most often lack.
Decide, account by account, between memorialization or closure and record it.
Store credentials separately in a password manager, and make sure one trusted person knows how to reach them.
Put the instructions somewhere with legal standing by recording them as part of the estate plan, rather than in a note nobody finds.
How Epilogue handles this
Epilogue includes a Social Media Will as part of its online Will service, in both of its pricing tiers. It records what should happen to social media profiles and online accounts, who should carry those wishes out, and whether accounts should be memorialized or closed.
Epilogue was founded by former estate lawyers, serves all ten provinces, stores its data in Canada, and allows documents to be updated at any time at no cost — which matters here more than in most areas of estate planning, because the platforms change their policies and someone's accounts change far more often than their beneficiaries do.
Full details are on Epilogue's pricing page, and there is more on the Social Media Will itself.
FAQ
What is digital estate planning in Canada?
Digital estate planning means deciding in advance what happens to online accounts, files, and digital assets after death, and recording those decisions where the family and the executor will find them. In practice it covers three things: nominating someone in advance on the platforms that offer this, listing which social media accounts exist, and recording instructions about how to handle these accounts.
How does someone set up a legacy contact for Facebook or Instagram?
Both platforms allow it. On Facebook it is set in account settings, by anyone aged 18 or over, for the main profile only. On Instagram it is under Accounts Centre → Personal details → Account ownership and control → Memorialization. The alternative is Delete after death. Either choice can be changed later, though turning off Delete after death requires naming a legacy contact instead.
Can someone leave a final message to be posted after they die?
Partly, and only on some platforms. A Facebook legacy contact can publish a pinned post on the memorialized profile, and Google's Inactive Account Manager sends trusted contacts a message the account holder wrote in advance. Most other platforms have no equivalent, so a message intended for a wider audience is better left with the person named to carry out the digital instructions.
What happens to a Facebook account when someone dies?
It is either memorialized — kept visible with "Remembering" beside the name — or permanently deleted at the family's request. If the person named a legacy contact in advance, that person can pin a post, change the profile and cover photos, and request removal, but cannot log in or read private messages.
What happens to an Instagram account after death?
Instagram memorializes the profile on a valid request: nobody can log in, "Remembering" appears beside the name, and posts stay visible to their original audience. An account holder can name a legacy contact in advance, or choose Delete after death instead. A memorialized profile with no legacy contact cannot be changed at all — not its photos, comments, privacy settings or profile picture.
What happens to a Gmail or Google account after someone dies?
Google's Inactive Account Manager, set up in advance, notifies up to ten trusted contacts after a chosen period of inactivity and can give them a download link to selected data across Gmail, Drive, Photos and YouTube. Without a plan, the family must contact Google directly, and accounts inactive for at least two years may be subject to deletion.
How does Google's Inactive Account Manager work?
The account holder sets how long Google should wait after the account goes quiet, writes the message their contacts will receive, and chooses which data may be shared. Contacts verify by phone before downloading anything. The trigger is inactivity, not a death certificate.
What happens to an Apple account and iCloud after death?
A legacy contact named in advance can request access using an access key plus a death certificate. They can reach photos, messages, notes, files and device backups — but not purchased films, music or books, and not iCloud Keychain.
What happens to an X or Twitter account when someone dies?
A verified immediate family member or someone authorized to act for the estate can request deactivation, supplying identification and a death certificate. X does not memorialize accounts and states it cannot provide account access to anyone, whatever their relationship. X also accepts deactivation requests for an incapacitated account holder, on production of a power of attorney.
What happens to a LinkedIn profile after someone passes away?
Anyone can report a member as deceased and LinkedIn will memorialize the profile. Only someone authorized to act for the deceased can request that the account be closed, with supporting documentation. Once memorialized, access is locked, and LinkedIn will not disclose usernames or passwords to anyone, including family. There is no advance nomination.
Does TikTok have a policy for deceased users?
As of September 2026, TikTok's English help centre publishes no guidance on deceased users — no memorialization policy, no documented request process, and no advance setting comparable to a legacy contact. Requests can be raised through general support, but there is no published process to rely on and no advance setting comparable to a legacy contact.
Can someone name a digital executor in a Canadian Will?
There is no separate legal office of digital executor in Canada, but a Will can name a specific person to help the executor carry out digital instructions. Telling that person where the instructions are kept matters as much as naming them.
Are instructions about social media accounts legally binding in a Canadian Will?
Wishes recorded in a Will can guide the executor, but they do not automatically give the executor access to an account. Whether an executor can access or control a particular account depends on the platform's terms and the law that applies in the relevant province.
Should passwords be included in a Will?
No. A Will may become a public document through probate, and using another person's credentials can breach a platform's terms. Instructions belong in the Will; credentials belong in a password manager or sealed record, with the executor told where to find it.
Does anyone need a separate Will for social media accounts?
Not a separate legal Will. What helps is a dedicated set of instructions covering online accounts, recorded as part of the estate plan — which is what a Social Media Will is.
What happens to a monetized or creator account after death?
Earnings owed at the date of death are generally an estate asset and can be claimed, though this can take time. The account itself usually cannot be inherited. Where a channel is a real business, holding the brand and intellectual property in a business entity may offer more protection.
Disclaimer: Epilogue is not a law firm and cannot provide any legal advice. This article is for informational purposes only and may not cover all legal considerations. For complex estate planning needs, consult a qualified estate planning professional.
