Updated August 13, 2026. Quick answer: memorialising is the reversible choice and deleting is not — a legacy contact can delete a memorialised profile later, but nobody can bring a deleted one back. And the thing families most often expect from a legacy contact is the one thing Facebook says it can never do: read the messages. It cannot log in either. If no legacy contact was ever named, a memorialised profile freezes exactly as it stands and nothing about it can be changed.
What memorialising actually does
Facebook describes the result rather than the mechanism: “Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away.”
Three concrete things change. “The word Remembering will be shown next to the person’s name on their profile”. “Content the person shared (ex: photos, posts) stays on Facebook and is visible to the audience it was shared with” — so the profile is preserved, not hidden. And “Memorialized profiles don’t appear in public spaces such as in suggestions for People You May Know, ads or birthday reminders”, which is the change families actually feel: the birthday notification stops.
The security consequence is stated flatly: “No one can log into a memorialized account.” Memorialisation is, among other things, the thing that stops a dead person’s profile being taken over.
What a legacy contact can and cannot do
This is the list to read before you rely on any of it. Facebook says a legacy contact can:
- “Write a pinned post for your profile”
- “Update your profile picture and cover photo”
- “Request the removal of your account”
- “Download a copy of what you’ve shared on Facebook, if you have this feature turned on”
And cannot:
- “Log into your account”
- “Read your messages”
- “Remove any of your friends or make new friend requests”
Two of those deserve to be said in plain language. The messages are never released to a legacy contact — not the inbox, not one conversation, not with a death certificate. And the download of your shared content only exists if you turned that option on while you were alive. A legacy contact appointed without that setting gets the pinned post and the profile photo, and that is genuinely all.
The other half of the rule is what happens with no legacy contact at all: “Memorialized accounts that don’t have a legacy contact can’t be changed”. The profile freezes in whatever state it was in.
Requesting removal, and what it costs you
Facebook will act on a request from someone who is “an immediate family member or executor of the account holder”.
The quickest evidence is “a scan or photo of your loved one’s death certificate”. If you do not have one, Facebook accepts a pair of documents instead — one showing your authority, one showing the death. For authority it lists “Power of attorney”, “Birth certificate (in cases where the deceased is a minor)”, “Last will and testament” and “Estate letter”. For death it accepts an “Obituary” or a “Memorial card”.
One requirement quietly rejects a lot of requests: “The information on the documentation you provide must match the information on your loved one’s account.” Accounts opened under a maiden name, a nickname, or a birth year the person shaved will not match a death certificate. Check the profile against the paperwork before you file, not after.
A power of attorney is on that list, which is worth noticing precisely because a power of attorney dies with the person everywhere else in estate administration. Facebook accepts it as evidence of relationship. Do not read that as it being valid authority anywhere else.
Which to choose, and in what order
Memorialise first, decide later. This is the whole practical point of the page. Memorialisation stops the birthday reminders and the ad targeting, preserves everything, and locks the account against takeover — and a legacy contact can still request removal afterwards. Deletion is the door that only opens one way.
Do not delete to spare the family the grief of seeing the profile. The family member who wants it gone this month is frequently the one who wants the photographs back next year, and by then there is nothing to want.
If you are planning rather than administering: appoint a legacy contact, and turn on the download-your-information option at the same time, because the appointment without the setting hands your person almost nothing. The equivalents at the other big platforms are Apple’s Legacy Contact and Google’s Inactive Account Manager; Microsoft has no equivalent at all.
Sources
Every quotation above is from Facebook’s own Help Centre — the legacy contact article, the memorialised accounts article, and the article on requesting removal of a deceased person’s account (facebook.com/help) — read 2026-08-13. Platform policies change without notice and this page carries its read date for that reason; if Facebook’s pages and this one disagree, Facebook’s are right and we want to know. The executor sequence this belongs to is at the executor’s digital inventory. See also methodology.
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Why the platform setting outranks your will. Nearly every state has adopted a law that puts the provider’s own tool at the top of the priority order and your will second — the statutory hierarchy, quoted.