How to notify Facebook when someone has passed away
Executor and Fiduciary Guide - Facebook Administration
Free guide for executors, fiduciaries, and the firms that advise them.
Administering an estate professionally? Eternal Pro captures every client asset at intake, traditional and digital, so accounts like this one are never found late. See how it works or book a demo.
Steps to notify Facebook
Verify authorization
Before starting, gather the documentation showing your legal authorization to proceed. If in doubt, double check with your estate executor, or trustee. Facebook generally requires:
- Death Certificate - A death certificate is an official document issued by the government, which declares cause of death, location of death, time of death and other information about the deceased.
- Account Required - Provider requires you to have an account already established in order to be named as a contact or gain access.
Facebook Supports Advance Digital Directives
Check to see if the deceased left an advance directive with Facebook, which supports:
- Legacy Contact
Legacy Contacts can look after memorialized profiles. - Automatic Deletion
You can configure your account to be deleted after your passing.
Fiduciary authority. In most US states a fiduciary's access to a decedent's digital assets is governed by RUFADAA, the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Where the account holder used the provider's own online tool — a legacy contact, an inactive account manager, or a beneficiary designation — that choice generally takes priority over conflicting will or trust language. Check the directive settings before relying on the will. General information, not legal advice.
Identify wishes
Facebook is a social network
Identify what the deceased's instructions are, or what they wanted to have happen to this asset when they passed away. This is usually located in their will or living trust documents. Or, if they're using Eternal Me, authorized executors can login and view their instructions.
Facebook supports these options directly:
- Memorialize - Legacy Contact to request the platform locally Memorialize your profile.
- Auto Deletion - You can configure automatic account deletion directly with a Digital Directive.
- Legacy Deletion - Assigned Legacy Contact to delete this account directly.
- Delete - Fiduciary to follow the policy to request deletion of the asset or closure of the account.
An authorized fiduciary can also carry out these actions manually for Facebook:
-
Manual Deletion
Request removal or deletion of the asset, or closure of account. -
Custom
Attempt custom instructions for managing this item.
Administer Facebook
Now that you've verified your authorization and identified the deceased's wishes, do the work to carry out their instructions. You can click here to begin the process of administering Facebook.
Document activities
It's important to carefully record each interaction, and be able to check on and report the status to heirs and estate executors. This is automatically handled for users of Eternal Me.
Handling this for a client?
Most digital assets are found the hard way — a renewal charge, a forwarded email, a relative who remembers. By then the account may be locked, or already deleted.
Eternal Pro is estate intake software for law firms and professional fiduciaries. Clients inventory their own assets — property, bank and investment accounts, crypto wallets, email, subscriptions, social profiles — in under 15 minutes, with instructions and directives attached to each one. When a matter reaches administration, the list already exists.
- Traditional and digital assets in one inventory
- Client-recorded instructions captured per asset at intake
- Automatic update reminders, so the record is current when it matters
- Flat rate, unlimited matters · SOC 2 Type 2 · HIPAA compliant
Continue to other assets
After handling the notification, move onto other assets. Here's a selection of other digital assets to address.
Stop finding digital assets after the fact
Eternal Pro builds a complete inventory of your clients' traditional and digital assets during intake, and keeps it current for as long as they are your clients.
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