Subscriptions & Auto-Payments After a Death

The quiet drain: streaming, SaaS, gym, app stores, and recurring donations keep charging for years after a death. How to find and stop every recurring charge.

Streaming services, SaaS tools, gym memberships, app stores, and recurring donations keep charging month after month after a death, sometimes for years, because nobody thinks to cancel them. This guide is about finding and stopping every recurring charge.

When to use this guide

Use this when you need to identify every recurring payment the deceased had and cancel, transfer, or preserve the ones that matter.

What you'll need

  • Access to the deceased's bank and credit card statements for the last 12 months (recurring charges appear monthly)
  • Their email inbox search access (receipts from every subscription land there)
  • The device they used (app-store subscriptions are tied to the account)

Step-by-step

  1. Mine the statements. Go through 12 months of statements and flag any charge that repeats. Look for small monthly amounts; they are the easiest to miss: $9.99 streaming, $14.99 SaaS, cloud storage, domain renewals, donations.
  2. Mine the inbox. Search the deceased's email for "receipt", "invoice", "your subscription", "renewal". This surfaces subscriptions paid by cards you have not seen yet, and gives you the cancel links and account logins you will need.
  3. Check app stores and platforms.
    • Apple: Settings, then Apple Account, then Subscriptions (or the legacy-contact flow for access).
    • Google: Play Store subscriptions are tied to the Google Account.
    • Amazon: Prime and marketplace subscriptions live under the account.
    These often require the account credentials, which is why a HeirloomFile entry should record where the account lives and who to contact, not the password.
  4. Cancel what is unneeded. Use each service's cancellation path; many require canceling before the renewal date to avoid another charged cycle. For services needing the deceased's account, contact support with the death certificate. Most major platforms have a "deceased user" or "account closure" process.
  5. Stop the payment rails too. Even after cancelling, watch two more billing cycles for stragglers. Consider closing the dedicated cards or accounts that only paid subscriptions.
  6. Preserve what has value. Cloud photo libraries, email archives, and domain names may be worth keeping for the family. Transfer them deliberately instead of cancelling everything.
  7. Recover overcharges. If charges continued after death for months, most companies refund on request once you show the death certificate.

Common pitfalls

  • Cancelling the payment card but not the subscriptions. Many services keep the account alive and bill the next card on file.
  • Forgetting annual renewals (domains, antivirus, Costco, Amazon Prime). These hit once a year and are easy to miss in a 12-month scan.
  • Letting a domain name lapse that hosts a family photo site or the deceased's business. Renew it before it expires and gets squatted.
  • Auto-donations to charities the family actually wants to keep. Confirm intent before cancelling.

⚠️ Verification note: platform "deceased user" processes change often; check each provider's current policy. When an account needs the deceased's credentials and you do not have them, the provider's support team with a death certificate is the path.

List subscriptions and where to cancel them in HeirloomFile now, so the family never pays for a dead person's Netflix for two years.