How to Take Control of a Deceased Person’s Facebook Account

Practical takeaways

When a person dies in Quebec, a family member or liquidator of the succession does not automatically obtain the right to log into the deceased person’s Facebook account. Facebook treats access to the account itself differently from the administration of a deceased person’s succession.

In practice, there are usually four distinct objectives:

• preserve the Facebook profile as a memorial;
• have the account permanently deleted;
• obtain limited authority to manage a memorialized profile through a legacy contact;
• obtain specific information or digital content required for the settlement of the succession or for litigation.

These objectives should not be confused. A liquidator may have broad authority to administer the deceased person’s property and affairs, but that does not necessarily give the liquidator the deceased person’s Facebook password or unrestricted access to private messages.

Facebook’s current system generally prevents anyone from logging into a memorialized account. A legacy contact may perform certain limited functions, but cannot read the deceased person’s private messages, modify old posts or simply operate the account as though he or she were the deceased person.

The first practical step is therefore to determine what is actually required: preservation, deletion, management of the public-facing profile, recovery of estate-related information, or preservation of evidence. The proper approach may be very different in each case.

Does the liquidator of a Quebec succession automatically control the deceased person’s Facebook account?

No.

Under Quebec succession principles, the liquidator is responsible for administering and settling the succession. That normally includes identifying assets and liabilities, recovering property or amounts owed to the deceased, dealing with service providers and eventually distributing the estate according to the will or the applicable succession rules. Quebec government guidance expressly identifies closing accounts and administering the deceased person’s property among the liquidator’s responsibilities.

A Facebook account, however, presents a different problem.

There may be several legally distinct elements involved:

• the user account itself;
• the contractual relationship with Facebook;
• photographs, videos, writings and other content created by the deceased;
• private communications;
• intellectual property rights in certain material;
• commercially valuable pages or business-related content;
• personal information concerning the deceased;
• information concerning third parties who communicated with the deceased.

The fact that the liquidator administers the succession does not mean that all of these elements become freely accessible.

This is why “taking control” of a deceased person’s Facebook account should normally be understood as obtaining the level of authority necessary for a legitimate estate purpose, rather than obtaining unrestricted access to the deceased person’s identity and communications.

Can a family member simply use the deceased person’s password?

This is generally a poor approach, even when the password is known.

A surviving spouse, child, sibling or liquidator may find that the deceased left a password written in a notebook, stored in a password manager or saved on a computer. That does not necessarily mean that the person should begin using the deceased person’s Facebook account.

There are several risks.

First, the Facebook account remains subject to the platform’s rules. Facebook provides specific procedures for deceased users and states that no one can log into an account once it has been memorialized.

Second, using the deceased person’s credentials can blur the distinction between preserving information and impersonating the deceased. Sending messages, changing posts, deleting conversations or interacting with third parties from the deceased person’s profile may create evidentiary and practical problems.

Third, private messages usually involve the privacy and confidentiality interests of other people as well as those of the deceased.

Finally, modifying or deleting information before the liquidator understands whether it may be relevant to the succession could destroy evidence that later becomes important.

For those reasons, possession of a password should not automatically be treated as authorization to use the account.

What happens when a Facebook account is memorialized?

Facebook allows an account to be converted into a memorialized account after the user’s death.

A memorialized profile is intended to preserve the person’s Facebook presence while preventing the account from continuing to operate as a normal active account. Facebook indicates that the word “Remembering” appears on the profile, previously shared content generally remains available according to its existing audience settings, and the profile is removed from certain public features such as birthday reminders and friend suggestions. Most importantly, no one can log into the memorialized account.

Memorialization can therefore be useful when the family wishes to preserve photographs, posts and memories without leaving an ordinary account apparently active after the person’s death.

It also has an important consequence: memorializing an account is not equivalent to transferring the account to the estate.

What is a Facebook legacy contact?

A Facebook user can designate a legacy contact before death.

If the account is later memorialized, the legacy contact may be allowed to perform limited administrative functions. According to Facebook’s current rules, those functions may include managing aspects of the memorialized profile, publishing a pinned post, responding to new friend requests, changing the profile or cover photograph and, if the deceased enabled the relevant feature, downloading certain information that the deceased shared on Facebook. A legacy contact may also request deletion of the memorialized account.

The authority is nevertheless limited.

A legacy contact cannot simply become the deceased user. Facebook states that a legacy contact cannot log into the deceased person’s account, read private messages, delete or alter the deceased person’s previous posts, or remove existing friends.

This distinction can be particularly important in a Quebec succession.

The liquidator and the legacy contact may be different people. The liquidator derives authority from the succession, while the legacy contact’s functions arise from the arrangements made by the deceased within Facebook.

One person does not necessarily replace the other.

What if there is no legacy contact?

If no legacy contact was selected, the available options become more limited.

Facebook states that a memorialized account without a legacy contact cannot generally be changed.

Family members may still be able to ask Facebook to memorialize the account or, where the applicable requirements are met, request its removal. Facebook maintains specific procedures for notifying it of a death, requesting memorialization, requesting deletion and making inquiries about content belonging to a deceased user.

What the family cannot safely assume is that Facebook will transfer ordinary login access simply because someone produces a will or proves that he or she is the liquidator.

Can the liquidator have the account deleted?

Deletion may be appropriate, but it should normally be considered carefully before it is requested.

The deceased may have chosen during his or her lifetime to have the Facebook account deleted after death. Facebook also permits certain requests concerning deletion of deceased users’ accounts.

From an estate perspective, however, deletion can have consequences.

The account may contain:

• photographs that exist nowhere else;
• communications concerning debts or loans;
• discussions about property;
• evidence concerning a business;
• information relevant to a will dispute;
• exchanges with family members;
• records relevant to a pending lawsuit;
• information needed to identify another digital account.

Once deletion is requested, some material may become difficult or impossible to recover.

Accordingly, the better sequence is often to determine whether the account contains information that should be preserved before requesting permanent deletion.

When Facebook content may matter to the succession

For many estates, Facebook has little financial importance. In others, it may contain information that materially affects the liquidation.

Consider a deceased person who regularly discussed private loans through Messenger. The liquidator discovers bank transfers to several individuals but cannot determine whether the transfers were gifts, loans or payments.

The liquidator’s objective is not necessarily to “take over Facebook.” The objective is to determine whether the succession has claims against third parties.

The distinction matters.

The liquidator should first gather information from ordinary estate sources: bank records, contracts, emails, tax documents and information supplied by the heirs. Only if relevant information appears to exist exclusively within Facebook may additional measures become necessary.

The same reasoning may apply where the Facebook material concerns ownership of property, a business transaction, a dispute among heirs or circumstances surrounding a contested transaction.

Facebook messages are not the same as estate property

Private messages deserve particular caution.

A Messenger conversation is not simply a document belonging exclusively to the deceased. It records communications involving at least one other person. Questions of privacy, confidentiality, relevance and procedural fairness may therefore arise.

The liquidator’s duty to administer the succession does not necessarily justify examining every private conversation the deceased ever had.

There should normally be a connection between the information sought and a legitimate succession purpose.

A focused request for communications concerning a specific asset, debt or transaction is fundamentally different from a request for unrestricted access to the deceased person’s entire digital correspondence.

What if Facebook information is needed as evidence?

A more formal approach may be required where the information is important to litigation or cannot be obtained through Facebook’s ordinary deceased-user procedures.

For example, imagine that a deceased parent transferred a valuable property shortly before death. One heir claims the transfer was a genuine gift. Another claims the recipient had agreed through Facebook messages to repay the deceased.

If the messages are central to the dispute and cannot be obtained from the recipient or from another available source, the parties may need to consider formal preservation or disclosure measures.

The precise procedure depends heavily on the facts, the type of proceeding, the information sought and the entity possessing the information.

The important practical point is that an estate dispute should not be approached by secretly entering the deceased person’s account and searching through it. Evidence obtained or altered in an uncontrolled manner can create problems concerning authenticity, completeness and admissibility.

Where litigation is reasonably foreseeable, preservation should generally come before deletion or modification.

The difference between a personal Facebook profile and a Facebook Page

This distinction can have major financial consequences.

A deceased person’s personal profile is different from a Facebook Page used for a business, professional activity, community organization or commercial brand.

A Page may already have several administrators or people with varying levels of access. Facebook’s Page-management system allows people with the required level of control to grant or modify access for others.

Suppose a deceased entrepreneur operated a restaurant and used a Facebook Page to communicate with customers. If several employees already have Page access, the business may be able to continue operating the Page without accessing the deceased owner’s personal profile.

The situation becomes more difficult if the deceased was the only person with administrative control. Facebook indicates that Pages for which a memorialized account was the sole administrator may be removed following a valid memorialization request.

Business owners should therefore avoid making a single personal account the only point of access to an important commercial Page.

Conflict between the liquidator and family members

Disagreements often arise because different people have different objectives.

A surviving spouse may want the account preserved as a memorial. An adult child may want it removed. The liquidator may believe that certain information must first be preserved for the succession.

The person who is emotionally closest to the deceased is not necessarily the person legally responsible for administering the succession.

In Quebec, the liquidator is responsible for putting the deceased person’s affairs in order and administering the succession.

That does not mean every decision about a social-media profile is exclusively financial. Personal, family and privacy interests may also be involved. But where the Facebook account contains information or material relevant to estate administration, the liquidator should consider those responsibilities before irreversible action is taken.

What if the deceased did not leave a will?

The absence of a will does not mean that any family member can take charge of the Facebook account.

Quebec succession rules determine who the potential heirs are and who will perform the functions of liquidator when no valid appointment has been made. The liquidator should be properly identified before representing himself or herself to third parties as the person administering the succession.

This can matter when Facebook or another service provider asks for documentation showing the requester’s authority.

The practical sequence is normally:

1. obtain official proof of death;
2. conduct the required will searches;
3. determine the last valid will, if any;
4. identify the liquidator;
5. determine what is actually required from Facebook;
6. submit the appropriate request supported by the required documentation.

Quebec’s official succession guidance follows the same general logic by requiring proof of death, will searches and identification of the liquidator early in the administration process.

Can heirs demand access directly?

An heir and a liquidator are not necessarily the same person.

An heir may have an economic interest in the succession, but the liquidator generally administers the succession during the liquidation process.

Accordingly, an heir who suspects that a Facebook account contains relevant information should normally raise the issue with the liquidator rather than independently attempting to take control of the deceased person’s account.

If there is a dispute about the liquidator’s administration, the problem may become one of succession administration rather than one of Facebook access alone.

Foreign estates and deceased Facebook users

International estates can create additional complications.

The deceased may have lived in Quebec while Facebook’s relevant corporate entities or data infrastructure are located elsewhere. The liquidator may live outside Canada. Litigation may be pending in another jurisdiction. The deceased may have had residences, heirs or property in several countries.

In those circumstances, authority recognized under Quebec succession law does not necessarily determine every question relating to access to information held by a foreign technology company.

The platform’s contractual rules, foreign privacy legislation, local procedural rules and the jurisdiction of the court hearing the dispute may all matter.

This is especially important when the objective is not merely memorialization or deletion but compulsory disclosure of data.

A practical example: preserving the account before deciding what to do

Daniel dies in Montreal. His daughter Sophie is appointed liquidator of his succession.

Daniel maintained an active Facebook profile containing years of family photographs. He did not appoint a legacy contact. Sophie also discovers evidence that Daniel had been negotiating the sale of a collectible automobile shortly before his death.

Her brother immediately wants the Facebook account deleted because seeing the profile online is upsetting.

Sophie has three different issues to consider.

The family photographs may have sentimental value. The public profile can potentially be preserved through memorialization. The communications concerning the automobile may have financial relevance to the succession.

An immediate deletion request could therefore solve the emotional problem while creating a new evidentiary problem.

A more careful approach would be to identify and preserve relevant estate information first, determine whether required information can be obtained from other sources, and only then decide whether memorialization or deletion best reflects the deceased person’s wishes and the needs of the succession.

A practical example: the legacy contact is not the liquidator

Marie appointed her friend Clara as her Facebook legacy contact several years before her death.

Her will later appoints her son Philippe as liquidator.

After Marie dies, Clara can exercise the functions Facebook allows a legacy contact to perform on the memorialized profile. That does not make Clara the liquidator of the succession.

Conversely, Philippe’s authority as liquidator does not automatically allow him to read Marie’s Messenger conversations or take over the profile.

The two appointments serve different purposes and may operate simultaneously.

Good estate planning should anticipate that distinction.

Preventive planning for Facebook and other digital accounts

The easiest digital-estate dispute is the one avoided during the person’s lifetime.

A person who uses Facebook regularly should consider:

• selecting a legacy contact;
• deciding whether the Facebook account should be memorialized or deleted after death;
• discussing that choice with the person who will administer the succession;
• keeping an updated inventory of important digital accounts;
• distinguishing personal social-media accounts from business assets;
• ensuring that business Pages have more than one authorized administrator;
• preserving important photographs or documents outside a social-media platform;
• documenting where financially important digital information can be found;
• considering digital assets when preparing or updating estate planning documents.

Facebook currently allows users to choose a legacy contact and provides options concerning what should happen to the account after death.

These platform settings should complement, rather than replace, proper succession planning.

Taking control of a deceased person’s Facebook account in Quebec rarely means receiving the deceased person’s password and continuing to use the account.

The central issue is identifying the legitimate objective.

If the objective is remembrance, memorialization may be appropriate. If the objective is removal, deletion may be requested once preservation concerns have been considered. If a legacy contact exists, that person may exercise the limited functions permitted by Facebook. If information is required for the succession or litigation, a more targeted disclosure or preservation strategy may be necessary.

The liquidator’s authority over the succession is important, but it does not automatically override Facebook’s account rules, the privacy interests associated with private communications or the procedural requirements that may apply to obtaining digital evidence.

The safest practical approach is therefore to preserve first, identify the specific information or authority actually required, and use the least intrusive mechanism capable of achieving that purpose.

This text is provided for legal information purposes only. If you have a specific question regarding your personal situation, please contact a lawyer.

Allen Madelin Avocats offer consultations both in person and via videoconference. The first consultation is offered for $125.For more information, please contact us by telephone: 1 514 904 4017 or by e-mail: [email protected].