Two documents open almost every platform process. One is a certified copy of the death certificate, and the other is the court paper naming the executor.
Order several copies of the death certificate at once, because nearly every process here asks for its own. Probate lawyers call the second one letters testamentary. The court issues it after appointing an executor, and platforms ask for it under that exact name. Which papers your state’s court produces, and what it calls them, is a question for the probate court or the estate’s lawyer.
The paper chase takes time, and none of it stops a storage account from running down its own deletion clock. So the copying has to run first. Saving the photos and files comes before any request that closes or deletes an account.
Two different jobs get mixed up here. Reporting a death is one thing, and proving that a court put you in charge is another thing entirely.
Anyone can report a death, and most platforms accept an obituary or a death certificate for that. Estate authority sets a much higher bar. Closing an account, moving it, or asking for the data usually needs papers a court has issued. Sorting out which request you’re making matters, because the two routes ask for different things.
A full request starts a 60-day clock, and it never ends with a password. What comes back is a copy. No platform examined for this site hands over login credentials, though Amazon and Snapchat presume or invite the use of one.
LinkedIn spells out what it will not accept
LinkedIn publishes both halves of its process. Anyone may ask for a profile to become a memorial, while closing an account is a job for estate representatives.
Its help page names four documents it accepts. Letters of administration, letters testamentary, letters of representation, and a court order all qualify. Nothing outside that short list does. The page flatly rejects wills, trusts, powers of attorney, identity documents, and screenshots.
That list surprises families, because a will feels like the document that proves who is in charge. The court paper is what does that job. A will names an executor, while the court’s letters are what show that the appointment took place.
Closure there is for good. LinkedIn deletes the account’s data within 30 days of closing it, so anything worth keeping comes out first.
The same split runs through every other company, even where the wording differs. Reporting is cheap, and authority is expensive. Meta accepts an obituary or a death certificate to turn a Facebook profile into a memorial, which anyone can trigger. Deleting an Instagram account needs a birth certificate, a death certificate, and proof of authority, per search-indexed copies of its help page.
A study co-authored by Facebook staff at the 2016 CHI conference found that a memorial freeze locks out family who hold the password. Reporting a death costs nothing at all. So a copy of anything that matters belongs somewhere else before a report goes in.
Some companies publish nothing on this at all. A search on July 28, 2026 found no official TikTok policy for a user who has died, and none at Reddit either.
The Remembering label that goes around in guides traces to a code discovery by a data miner in March 2024. TikTok has never announced it. An in-app report path shows up in third-party write-ups, and no TikTok page confirms that it exists. A blank like that is still worth reporting, because a guide that fills the gap with a guess sends families down a dead end.
Every company asks for its own combination
The core package repeats with small changes. Google’s request process asks for a government identity document and a death certificate, plus an American court order for message content.
Apple’s route runs on a legacy contact plus an access key that the account holder created before dying. A death certificate has to go with it. Apple’s platform security guide says the beneficiary holds the decryption key, and the company keeps only an encrypted packet. Nobody inside the company can waive that key, which puts paperwork second to a setting made in advance.
X deactivates and nothing else, and its process asks for proof of who is asking plus a death certificate. It also runs a power-of-attorney path. That path covers incapacity rather than death, and it turns on a document the person signed while living.
Discord asks for three things in all. Its published policy wants a death certificate or coroner’s report, proof of relationship, and proof of who is asking.
Discord refuses access either way, and deletion is all it offers. Amazon works in a different way. Its bereavement channel asks for a death certificate, proof of estate authority, a photo document, and the account email or phone. That channel can stop subscriptions before the package is complete, which shortens the wait on the money side.
Amazon’s bereavement page is the outlier here. It runs against the general pattern. The page invites survivors holding the account email or phone to sign in or reset the password, and Snapchat’s deletion path presumes the same.
What comes back is usually a copy, not access
Paperwork rarely gives you what you expect. The act sets 60 days for a company to answer a full request, and it can answer with a copy of the data.
Full access, partial access, or a copy are all allowed answers, and the company picks between them. The act calls that company the custodian. A custodian can demand a court order even after a complete package arrives, and nothing in the act takes that option away. Whether pushing past a copy is worth the cost is a call for the estate’s lawyer.
The catalogue and the content sit on different sides of that line. The catalogue records who, when, and where. Message content needs the person’s recorded consent or a court order, and that’s where requests stall.
Court orders take time and cost money. Logging in with their password tempts families who are tired of waiting, and that route carries problems of its own.
Google’s process offers three outcomes in all. A family can ask for account closure, for funds held in the account, or for the data itself.
Unpaid AdSense earnings belong to the estate, and the deceased-user process is where a family claims them. The account itself does not transfer. Instagram works the other way, because nobody can change a memorial account once the freeze is on. Choosing which request to file, and in what order, is worth an hour with the estate’s lawyer.
Nearly every platform process starts from those same two documents, so gather them once and reuse the copies. Ordering a few spare certificates costs little. The probate court that appointed the executor is the place to ask for more of them. The overview page shows where all this sits in the wider order of work.
Paper for someone who is still alive
Incapacity runs on a much lighter package. A durable power of attorney appoints an agent whose authority survives the principal’s loss of capacity.
No death certificate applies, and no court has to appoint anybody, so the agent files the document and a signed statement. The living principal can help as well. A principal who can still agree can prove who they are, approve a login, and read out a code sent to a phone. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau advises agents to involve the principal wherever they still can.
The act splits the account here too. Section 10 of the act covers the catalogue. General authority in the document reaches it, while Section 9 releases message content only where the document grants that power in so many words.
A boilerplate form works fine at one level. It fails at the level where an agent needs to read email to trace a bill or finish a login check.
Texas amended its statutory form to add an express digital-content power, which shows how the drafters read the gap. Practice runs well behind the statute. Texas practitioner Gerry Beyer reports that custodians often demand court orders no matter what authority a document already grants. Whether a given form carries the wording a company wants is a question for the lawyer who drafts it.
The bureau’s guide for agents documents a related problem. Institutions refuse valid powers of attorney. They demand forms of their own instead, which lands badly once the principal can no longer sign anything.
Where the documents come from, and what stalls them
Two offices issue nearly all this paper. The office that registers deaths produces certified copies, and the probate court produces the letters that name the executor.
Order the certificates in bulk at the start, because each request uses one up. A spare copy costs little. The probate handbook checklist hosted by the Fairfax County Commissioner of Accounts tells executors to pull three years of bank statements. Those statements build the subscription list that the platform paperwork then acts on.
Mail forwarding through the Postal Service catches renewal notices and account letters that statements miss. It wants in-person proof of executor authority. Doing that early means the mail lands somewhere a living person opens it.
Conservators have the thinnest path of all. The act asks for a court order granting digital-asset access on top of the appointment itself.
Use a mailbox somebody still opens. Google sends its inactivity warnings to the account and its recovery email, and both can belong to the person who died.
Keep one scanned set of every document, because the same items go out again and again. Label each file with the date on it. A request that arrives incomplete can send the whole thing back to the start. None of that speeds up a company that has decided to wait for a court.
Ask the lawyer handling the estate which requests are worth making at all. Some accounts hold nothing at all. A lawyer who has seen the inventory can say which ones to skip, and each one skipped saves a certified copy.