FAQ: What Does Facebook Have to do With Louisiana Estate Planning?

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Most people do not think of Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat as part of their estate plan, which is bold considering some of us touch those apps more often than we touch our spouse, our Bible, our bank account, or the laundry we keep restarting because we are not emotionally prepared to fold it. We scroll in bed, in the bathroom, at red lights, in the school pickup line, and during conversations where we are nodding like we heard a damn word. Then we act shocked when somebody dies and the family suddenly needs access to the same account that knew what we ate for lunch, where we went on vacation, who we were mad at in 2019, and which cousin cannot be trusted around an open comment section.

Facebook is not just Facebook anymore. It may be the family photo album, funeral announcement board, community newspaper, Marketplace receipt drawer, church bulletin, birthday reminder, business page, customer inbox, and neighborhood surveillance system all in one cursed little blue app. Instagram may hold pictures, reels, customer messages, brand content, proof of work, ads, appointment requests, and the only decent photo anybody has where Mama was not blinking, fussing, or saying, “Do not put that on the internet.” Snapchat may have photos, messages, locations, and conversations somebody may desperately want later, even though Snapchat was clearly designed by a person who looked at evidence and said, “What if this had commitment issues?”

That is why this matters. Your family may need those accounts after death or incapacity. They may need pictures for the funeral slideshow. They may need to announce arrangements. They may need to stop scammers from using your account to message Aunt Linda about a fake government grant. They may need to find business messages, proof of payments, customer orders, property conversations, or a little piece of drama nobody knew about because the dead, inconsiderate as ever, do not leave a spreadsheet titled “Things I Hid Poorly.”

And if you own a small business in a rural area, this is not cute. This is not optional. Around here, Facebook and Instagram are often the whole front porch of the business. People do not always go to your website. Hell, some folks will trust a Facebook page with blurry pictures and 87 reviews before they trust a polished website that looks like it was built by a man in loafers who says “scalable.” A boutique takes orders through Messenger. A hair stylist books through Instagram. A contractor gets work because somebody saw a before-and-after post. A bakery sells out because one cake picture made half the town hungry and the other half nosy. A deer processor, daycare, lawn company, photographer, realtor, church, nonprofit, or local store may have its customers sitting inside a social media inbox like a tiny digital waiting room full of people asking, “Are y’all open today?”

Now picture the owner dies or becomes incapacitated and nobody can get into the page. The business may still exist on paper, but the public-facing part of it is locked behind a password nobody knows, a phone nobody can unlock, and a two-factor code being sent straight into the electronic afterlife. Customers are messaging. Ads are running. Orders are sitting there. Hours are wrong. Reviews are unanswered. Somebody in town has already said, “I heard they closed,” because rural Facebook can turn one unanswered message into a full autopsy before lunch.

Here is the ugly truth: being family does not automatically get you access. Being the spouse does not unlock Facebook. Being the child does not unlock Instagram. Being named executor does not make Snapchat slide into your DMs with the password and condolences. These platforms have rules, forms, privacy policies, and help centers that feel like they were built by robots who were homeschooled in a basement and never hugged.

Louisiana law does help. Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure article 3191 gives a succession representative authority, unless limited by a will or court order, to take control of, handle, continue, distribute, or terminate a deceased person’s digital account. That is useful authority, and attorneys need to use it. But legal authority and practical access are not the same thing. The law may say you can deal with the account. The platform may still want proof of death, proof of appointment, identity verification, a specific request, a court order, your blood type, your firstborn, and three business days to do absolutely nothing helpful. Article 3191 gives the succession representative authority over digital accounts, but that authority is still subject to limits like federal law and platform rules.

Facebook lets users plan ahead with legacy contact options or account deletion choices. Instagram has memorialization and removal procedures. Snapchat is the mean one in the group project: its current support policy says its privacy rules do not allow it to grant access to the account of someone who passed away. So if your entire plan is “they can just get into it later,” congratulations, you have created a scavenger hunt for grieving people who already hate everyone.

This is why I personally think you should do both things. First, complete the memorialization, legacy contact, inactive-account, or death-planning options each platform gives you while you are alive and still remember which email you used. Set the Facebook legacy contact. Review Instagram and Meta settings. Understand Snapchat’s limits. Use Apple Legacy Contact and Google Inactive Account Manager where appropriate, because Apple and Google both offer tools to plan for access to certain account data after death or inactivity. Do not leave your family trying to perform CPR on your digital life during funeral week while somebody is crying in the kitchen, somebody else is asking where the potato salad goes, and two cousins start loading the pick-up truck with granny's valuables before anyone notices.

Second, make sure your estate planning documents say the same thing. Your will should authorize your succession representative to handle digital accounts after death. Your power of attorney should authorize your agent to handle them during incapacity. Your business documents should say who controls the Facebook page, Instagram account, ad account, website, domain, email list, payment processor, customer messages, and online records. The platform settings and the estate documents need to match. Otherwise, you have one document saying “let her in” and one billion-dollar website saying “new phone, who dis?”

And no, writing “my wife knows my passwords” on a legal pad is not estate planning. That is how families end up standing around a locked phone entering birthdays, anniversaries, grandkids’ names, hunting camp nicknames, Bible verses, and cuss words until the device starts acting like it needs a exorcism. If a decedent’s phone is locked and nobody knows the passcode, stop guessing.

Keep it charged. Do not reset it. Do not let Uncle Randy “try something.” Uncle Randy still has seven toolbars on his computer and thinks the cloud is weather. Accessing a locked phone may involve Apple, Google, the phone carrier, court paperwork, account credentials, legacy contacts, or a whole separate legal mess. That is its own blog post, because the locked-phone issue is where grief, technology, and family panic meet in a Waffle House parking lot at 2:00 a.m.

The fix is not complicated. Give someone legal authority. Give them practical information. Give them clear instructions. Use a password manager (we have a free digital password and accounts vault on our Hampton Law Firm App and we also have hard copy password and accounts vault in our office), secure letter, or business binder that lists important accounts, recovery emails, two-factor numbers, and what should happen to each account. For business pages, give at least one trusted backup person the right access. Not every employee needs admin control, because we are planning for death, not starting a cult. But someone should be able to stop ads, answer customers, update hours, and keep the business from looking dead online just because the owner cannot log in.

If you use Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat every day, stop pretending they are not part of your real life. They may hold your pictures, messages, customers, receipts, proof, reputation, private nonsense, public announcements, and half the story your family will be trying to understand later. A good Louisiana estate plan should not leave your people grieving, guessing passwords, fighting Meta, and trying to keep a small business alive while Facebook sends a security code to a dead woman’s purse.

Sometimes the most important key you leave behind is not on a key ring. It is the login to the place where the photos, messages, customers, ads, receipts, reputation, and digital dirt are sitting there waiting to ruin somebody’s week.

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Judith L. Hampton

Attorney at Law

Hampton Law Firm