Closing an Instagram account after a death
When someone dies, their Instagram account stays as it was. Photos stay up, and the account can keep appearing in suggestions. This page explains what Instagram offers, what Meta asks for, and one detail about the form that surprises people.
What Instagram can do
Meta offers two things for a deceased person's Instagram account.
Memorialize. The account stays, with "Remembering" shown next to the name. No one can log in to it again. Posts stay visible to the same people as before, frozen as they are.
Remove. The account and everything on it is deleted. This cannot be undone.
Decide this first
A memorialized account cannot be changed. If there are photos the family wants to keep, or posts they want taken down, that has to happen before either request is made.
What Meta asks for
- To memorialize: proof of death. A link to an obituary or news notice, or a death certificate.
- To remove: proof of death, plus proof that you are immediate family or the legal representative of the estate.
Meta does not ask for the person's password, and no one is ever given access to the account.
How to do it yourself
Meta's form is here: Report a deceased person's account on Instagram. When we last checked, the form had to be sent by someone signed in to their own Instagram account. If you do not have one, a family member who does can send it.
You give the person's name and username, the date of death, your relationship, and the proof above. Meta's response has tended to take about two weeks.
If you would rather not do this twenty times
Instagram is usually one of many. Email, photo storage, shopping, streaming, subscriptions still charging a card. Most families do not know what accounts exist until the statements arrive.
We check your loved one's identifiers against the platforms people actually use, confirm what each one requires, and submit the closure or memorialization requests through each platform's official process. Because Instagram's form has to come from a signed-in account, we prepare the request in full and a family member sends it from their own account, with us alongside. We never sign in to anyone's account, and we never ask for a password. When the last platform has replied, you receive one closure report covering every platform we checked, including where no account was found.
Standard Closure is $300. Custom Closure, which adds the accounts you name, is $400. The fee is agreed before we begin.
We are not affiliated with Meta. Meta's process and timing are Meta's, and can change. Financial, investment and government accounts are outside what we handle; the executor deals with those directly.