What happens to your Facebook account if you pass away
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Choosing your legacy contact is currently only available for your main profile and doesn't apply to additional Facebook profiles. You can choose to either appoint a legacy contact to look after your memorialised main profile or have your account permanently deleted from Facebook.
If you don't choose to have your account permanently deleted, only your main profile will be memorialised if we become aware of your passing.
Memorialised profiles
Memorialised profiles are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorialised profiles have the following key features:
The word Remembering will be shown next to the person's name on their profile.
Depending on the privacy settings of the profile, friends can share memories on the memorialised timeline.
Content the person shared (e.g. photos, posts) stays on Facebook and is visible on Facebook to the audience it was shared with.
Memorialised profiles don't appear in suggestions for People you may know, ads or birthday reminders.
No one can log in to the account of a memorialised profile.
Memorialised profiles that don't have a legacy contact can't be changed.
Pages with a sole admin whose profile was memorialised will be removed from Facebook if we receive a valid memorialisation request.
Legacy contacts
A legacy contact is someone you choose to look after your profile if it's memorialised. We strongly suggest setting a legacy contact so that your profile can be managed once it's been memorialised.
A legacy contact can accept friend requests on behalf of a memorialised profile, and change the profile picture and cover photo.
Learn more about what legacy contacts can do and how to add a legacy contact to your account.
Deleting your account when you pass away
You can choose to have your account permanently deleted should you pass away. This means that when someone lets us know that you've passed away, all of your messages, photos, posts, comments, reactions and info will be immediately and permanently removed from Facebook. Your main profile and any additional Facebook profiles will also be deleted.
Manage your memorialisation preference in Accounts Centre
Request that your account be deleted
1.
Log in to Facebook from a computer.
2.
From your main profile, click your profile photo in the top right of Facebook.
3.
Select Settings and privacy, then click Settings.
4.
Below General profile settings, click Memorialisation settings.
5.
Scroll down, click Request that your account be deleted after you've passed away and click Delete after death.
For friends and family
If you'd like to create another place for people on Facebook to share memories of your loved one, we suggest creating a group.
Learn how to request the memorialisation of an account or how to request the removal of a deceased person's account from Facebook.
