Updated August 13, 2026. Quick answer: write the list before you try any door. Every major platform we read this month refuses an executor who arrives without documentation, and two of them refuse one who arrives with it — so the skill an executor actually needs is not getting in, it is knowing what exists before the clock runs. The shortest clock we found is Microsoft’s: the mail and the files are deleted after one year of inactivity.
Why the inventory comes before any access attempt
Three reasons, in the order they bite.
An account nobody knows about cannot be found later. No statement arrives in the post for a PayPal balance, a photo library, or a domain name that the family business runs on. An executor who never learns the account exists does not fail to open it — they fail to know it was there, and the failure is invisible until the asset is gone.
The clocks start at the death, not at your appointment. Probate routinely takes longer than a platform’s deletion window. Microsoft states plainly that “Outlook.com and OneDrive accounts will be frozen after 1 year and any email messages and files stored on OneDrive will be deleted shortly after”, with the account itself expiring after two years. An estate that reaches the email question in month fourteen has already lost it.
The wrong first move can close the legitimate routes. Which is the next section, and it is the one worth reading twice.
The five things never to do
Never log in with the deceased’s password. It feels like the obvious shortcut and it is the single most common way an executor damages their own position. The providers say why in their own terms: Yahoo states that “all Yahoo accounts are non-transferable, even when the account owner is deceased”, and Facebook that “No one can log into a memorialized account.” A login is a breach of the agreement the platform is telling you it intends to honour on the dead person’s behalf, and it is the fact you will least want on the record if any of this is later contested by a beneficiary.
Never delete anything before the list is written. Deactivating an Amazon account with a balance on it destroys the balance; Amazon’s own terms say no portion of a balance may be transferred to another account. Closing a Microsoft account is reversible for 60 days and permanent after that.
Never assume the will controls. In nearly every state, the platform’s own tool ranks above the will in the priority order — a Legacy Contact or Inactive Account Manager setting the deceased made in five minutes beats the document their lawyer drafted. The hierarchy, quoted from the statute.
Never put passwords in the will. A will becomes a public court record in probate. The inventory belongs somewhere else, and so do the credentials.
Never pay a digital estate recovery service to do this. Every route on this page is free and runs through a form or an email address published by the platform itself. Nobody can sell you access that the platform has said in writing it will not grant.
The first-30-days sweep, in order
Days 1-3: secure the devices, do not use them. Collect the phone, the laptop, the tablet. Charge the phone and keep it charged — a phone that is still unlocked or still receiving two-factor codes is the most valuable object in the estate for this purpose, and a phone that goes flat and locks may never open again. Do not factory reset anything.
Days 1-7: stop the money going out. Subscriptions and recurring deliveries bill an estate for months. Amazon will terminate subscriptions and stop recurring deliveries on a lighter documentation tier than it needs for anything else, and Yahoo publishes a phone route for cancelling billing when the death certificate has not arrived yet. Do this before you do anything intellectual.
Days 3-14: build the list from the paper, not from the devices. The bank and card statements are the best account inventory in existence — every subscription, every platform, every domain renewal shows up as a charge. So does the tax return, for accounts that generate income. Work from those and you will find accounts no family member remembers.
Days 7-21: sort the list into four piles. Money (balances, payment platforms, crypto, unpaid invoices). Meaning (photos, letters, video). Machinery (domains, hosting, a business email the company runs on, password managers). Noise (loyalty points, dormant social accounts, newsletters). Only the first three deserve any of your time.
Days 14-30: route each pile, one at a time. The routes we have read at source are below. Take the ones that are free and quick first; leave anything needing a court order until you know what is actually behind the door.
Where each platform actually leads
- Apple — a pre-death setting exists. If a Legacy Contact was named and holds the access key, this is the easiest door in the whole exercise.
- Google — a pre-death setting exists, and a request route if it was never set up.
- Microsoft — no pre-death setting, and in the US no next-of-kin route at all: a subpoena or court order, served on the registered agent in your state. This is the one with the one-year clock.
- Yahoo — closure and billing on a death certificate; contents only on a US court order in language Yahoo supplies.
- Facebook — memorialise (reversible) or delete (not). A legacy contact can never read the messages.
- Amazon and PayPal balances — PayPal pays out to the estate; an Amazon balance cannot leave the account it is in.
The rest of the estate sequence, the non-digital part, is at the estate settlement roadmap. If you are here while planning rather than administering, the version of this list you write for your own executor is at digital assets in estate planning.
Sources
The quotations on this page are from the platforms’ own published pages, each read 2026-08-13: Microsoft’s Accessing Outlook.com, OneDrive and other Microsoft services when someone has died, Yahoo’s Options available if a Yahoo account owner passes away, Facebook’s Help Centre articles on memorialised accounts and legacy contacts, and Amazon’s Bereavement support and Balance and Gift Card Terms and Conditions. The statutory claim — that the provider’s tool outranks the will — is quoted from the uniform act on our page that carries the statute and is not restated here. Platform policies change without notice, which is why every page in this cluster carries its read date; if a platform’s page and ours disagree, theirs is right and we want to know. 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.