Planning ahead for your AWS accounts
Lifetime transfer options and steps to take now for Amazon Web Services, Inc. accounts
AWS Support
AWS Support (no dedicated estate or bereavement channel)
Transfer of accounts after death is not guaranteed under Amazon Web Services, Inc.'s terms. Lifetime planning offers a more reliable way to manage and share accounts while the account is active.
How to protect your AWS accounts
8 lifetime planning steps for your AWS accounts:
Family sharing
AWS has no consumer family-sharing or pooling feature. The organizational equivalent is AWS Organizations: multiple AWS accounts are combined into one organization for central management, with a management account and optional delegated administrator accounts. In All Features mode, authorized IAM users or roles in the management or delegated admin account can close member accounts and update member account settings (including the root user email address, account name, contact information, alternate contacts, and Regions) without the member account's root credentials. Centralized root access additionally lets an organization remove member account root credentials entirely — AWS states such member accounts "can't sign in to their root user or perform password recovery for their root user unless account recovery is enabled" — and lets the management account or delegated administrator run an "Allow password recovery" privileged task when root access to a member account is needed. None of this applies to a standalone account, which can only be acted on by its own root user. Alternate contacts are a notification list and confer no account authority.
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Frequently asked questions
For a standalone account, a lawful route to root access has to remain reachable by whoever settles the estate, because AWS documents closure only by the root user and AWS Support will not do it for an estate. For production workloads, placing the account inside AWS Organizations in All Features mode lets an organization admin close member accounts without the member root credentials. An inventory of what is running and what it costs, IAM users and roles documented separately from the root user (they cannot close a standalone account), a note of any Route 53 domain the root email depends on, and regular backups of important data and snapshots address the rest — AWS deletes remaining resources after the 90-day post-closure period.
A lawful route to the root user email address, and to any MFA device or recovery method attached to it — recorded alongside the account ID, not as a shared password. AWS documents closure of a standalone account only by the root user, and AWS Support will not close one for an estate. IAM users and roles can run day-to-day operations but cannot close a standalone account or perform other root-only tasks. For production workloads, placing the account in AWS Organizations in All Features mode lets an organization admin close it centrally without the member root credentials, removing the single point of failure a standalone account creates. AWS also states that MFA is not removed automatically when an account is closed, and that a hardware TOTP token cannot be associated with another user after permanent closure.
Listing the AWS account in an estate inventory identifies it for a fiduciary, who works through the operator's official channels to manage or close it.
AWS does not support beneficiary designations. Unlike financial accounts, there is no way to name a beneficiary on this type of account.
Sources
Data sourced from Amazon Web Services, Inc. primary sources (8 pages reviewed). How we research.
AWS Support
AWS Support (no dedicated estate or bereavement channel)
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