People arrive at this page at two very different moments. Some are setting something up for later. Some lost someone this week and would like the profile to stop appearing in their feed. Both are covered below, and the second group can start at requesting memorialization or removal.
A Facebook legacy contact is someone you choose in advance to look after your profile once it has been memorialized. It is worth setting up, and it is narrower than most people expect. The single most common misunderstanding is worth stating before anything else: a legacy contact cannot log into the account and cannot read the messages. Meta says so directly, and people are often surprised by it at the worst possible time.
Once the profile is memorialized, the person you named is able to do four things. Meta lists them plainly: write a pinned post for the profile, update the profile picture and cover photo, request the removal of the account, and download a copy of what was shared on Facebook, if that feature was turned on beforehand.
In practice the pinned post is the one that matters most to families. It is how a funeral notice, a memorial page, or a short message from the family reaches everyone who arrives at the profile looking for information. The download option only works if it was enabled in advance, which is a detail worth handling while you are setting this up rather than discovering later.
You must be 18 or older to name a legacy contact, and it applies to your main profile.
Three limits, quoted from Meta’s own help documentation. A legacy contact cannot “log into your account,” cannot “read your messages,” and cannot “remove any of your friends or make new friend requests.”
The messages limit is the one that causes real distress, because the private conversations are often the thing a grieving family most wants. There is no setting that changes this and no request that unlocks it. If the messages matter to you, the honest answer is that Facebook is not the mechanism, and anything you want preserved needs saving another way while you are able to.
It is also worth knowing that no one can log into a memorialized account at all. That includes someone holding the password. Having the credentials does not help here, because the account state itself blocks sign-in rather than the password check.
This is a real decision rather than a choice between two buttons, and it is one that families quite often disagree about. There is no correct answer, so what follows is what each option actually does.
Memorializing keeps the profile. The word “Remembering” appears next to the person’s name. What they shared stays on Facebook and remains visible to the audience it was originally shared with, and friends can still post memories to the timeline depending on the privacy settings. Meta also removes the profile from the places that hurt most: memorialized profiles do not appear in suggestions for People You May Know, in ads, or in birthday reminders. That last one is often the reason a family contacts Facebook at all.
Deleting removes it. If a person chose the delete-after-death option in advance, Meta’s description of what happens is unambiguous: when someone lets Facebook know they have passed away, “all of your messages, photos, posts, comments, reactions and info will be immediately and permanently removed from Facebook.”
The asymmetry between the two is the thing to sit with. A memorialized profile can still be removed later if the family decides that is right. A deleted profile cannot be brought back. Where relatives want different things, that difference is usually the most useful fact in the conversation, and there is no deadline forcing the decision quickly.
If you are doing this for yourself, both choices live in the same place. In Facebook, open Accounts Center and find the Memorialization settings. From there you can either name a legacy contact or choose to have the account permanently deleted after your death.
Two things worth doing at the same time. Turn on the option that lets your legacy contact download a copy of what you have shared, since it cannot be enabled afterwards by anyone else. And tell the person you named, because Facebook will notify them but a notification from Meta about death is easy to mistake for a scam and delete.
Meta reorganizes these settings periodically. If the path has moved, search Facebook’s settings for “memorialization.” Verified against Meta’s help documentation on August 4, 2026.
If you are the one making the request, Facebook asks for documentation confirming you are an immediate family member or the executor, and it offers more than one way to satisfy that.
The quickest route is a scan or photo of the death certificate. If you do not have one yet, Facebook accepts a pair of documents instead: proof of your authority, which can be a power of attorney, a last will and testament, an estate letter, or a birth certificate where the person who died was a minor, together with proof of death, which can be an obituary or a memorial card.
One practical detail that causes rejections: Meta states that the information on the documentation you provide must match the information on the account. A profile under a maiden name, a nickname, or a shortened name is a common reason a request comes back, and it is easier to anticipate than to appeal.
Requests are reviewed by people, so this takes time. There is no fixed turnaround published, and following up is reasonable if you hear nothing.
Instagram is also Meta, and it is handled separately with its own settings and its own request form. Most guides say Instagram has no legacy contact. That is now out of date: it does, and the powers are narrower than Facebook’s.
| Legacy contact can | ||
|---|---|---|
| Write a pinned post | Yes | No |
| Update the profile picture | Yes, plus the cover photo | Yes |
| Manage tags | Not listed | Yes, can see and manage tags |
| Request account removal | Yes | Not listed |
| Read messages, or log in | No to both | No to both |
The survivor path differs too. To have an Instagram profile memorialized, Meta asks for proof of death such as a link to an obituary or a news article, which is a lower bar than Facebook’s. To have a profile removed, it asks for proof that you are an immediate family member, such as the person’s birth certificate or death certificate, or proof of authority under local law. As on Facebook, no one can log into a memorialized Instagram profile, “Remembering” is shown next to the name, and the profile stops appearing in places like Explore.
Facebook legacy contact capabilities, memorialization effects, delete-after-death wording, and documentation requirements from Meta’s Help Center; Instagram legacy contact and memorialization details from Instagram’s Help Center and its memorialized-profiles page. All checked August 4, 2026. Meta changes these flows often, so treat the date as part of the fact.
Nothing here has to be decided this week. Memorializing is reversible in the direction that matters, the account is not going anywhere, and the profile appearing in a feed is a reason to act when you are ready rather than a deadline.
If the birthday reminders are the specific thing that is hard, memorialization stops those without removing anything. If the profile itself is painful to see, most people find unfollowing or muting easier to undo later than a decision made in the first fortnight.
Social accounts are usually one small part of what a family ends up sorting out. The wider picture, if it is useful, is in what happens to your accounts when you die, and Apple handles this differently again.
This is a plain-English description of how Meta’s features work, and it is not legal advice.
If you are getting your own affairs in order, our death binder guide walks through what your family would need.