What happens to Claude accounts when the owner dies
Anthropic PBC accounts are forfeited under the program's terms when the account is closed
Anthropic Support (Claude Help Center)
Anthropic Privacy Team (no dedicated estate or bereavement team is published)
Anthropic PBC, 548 Market St, PMB 90375, San Francisco, CA 94104
No published SLA for estate or deceased-user requests, because Anthropic publishes no such process. Its stated privacy-request practice is to respond within the period required by the data protection law that applies to the requester, and it names one calendar month under the EU or UK GDPR, extendable by up to two further months for complex or repeated requests. The clocks that do run: a Pro or Max subscription keeps auto-renewing until cancelled, and cancelling less than 24 hours before the next billing date does not stop that period's charge; a data export download link expires 24 hours after delivery; deleted conversations leave chat history immediately and are removed from back-end storage within 30 days; prepaid API credits expire one calendar year from issue and are destroyed if the account is closed; an account inactive for over a year with no paid plan may be terminated by Anthropic with prior notice; and after deletion the account email is blocked from creating a new Claude account for 30 days.
Anthropic PBC's terms state that accounts are not the property of the account holder and are forfeited at death. The program does not provide a mechanism for transferring accounts to heirs.
Families have occasionally received goodwill accommodations from Anthropic PBC, but these are not part of the published terms and cannot be relied upon.
What to do
When a Claude account holder dies, these are the steps to take:
- •Signed up on the web or the desktop app: cancellation happens in the account's own Settings > Billing. Cancel at least 24 hours before the next billing date to avoid the next period's charge.
- •Signed up through Claude for iOS or Android: billing is handled by Apple or Google, and the Consumer Terms provide that the App Distributor's terms on payment, billing, and refunds apply instead of Anthropic's. The subscription is cancelled through the App Store or Google Play, not through Anthropic.
- •If the estate cannot reach the subscription through instructions the account holder left for this purpose, the executor can stop the charge at its source by closing or freezing the card or bank account it bills, and write to Anthropic to cancel. Do not use the decedent's password.
- •A certified copy of the death certificate
- •Letters testamentary or letters of administration naming the executor or personal representative
- •The executor's government-issued photo ID
- •The digital-assets (RUFADAA) authorization clause from the will or trust, if the estate documents contain one
- •The email address on the Claude account, so Anthropic can identify it
- •Prepaid credits are governed by the Supplemental Credit Terms, which state that credits "are non-refundable", that "Usage Credits expire one calendar year from the date Anthropic sends the Confirmation Notice or otherwise issues the Credits", and that credits "are not legal tender or currency of any kind and have no cash value"
- •Credits cannot be moved to anyone else: "Customer may not transfer or sell Credits ... and Credits may only be used by the holder of the Anthropic account to which the Credits are associated"
- •Closing the account destroys any remaining balance: credits "will also automatically expire if Customer closes its Anthropic account and cannot be recovered". Sequence the account closure after the estate has decided what to do about the balance, not before.
- •The Balance Maintenance Service is a second recurring charge. If it was switched on, it authorizes Anthropic to charge the payment method on file on a recurring basis to top the balance back up "until Customer opts out". Cancelling a Pro or Max subscription does not stop it.
- •Any production integration running on the account's API keys stops when billing fails or the keys are rotated.
Required Documents
- Certified copy of the death certificate
- Letters testamentary or letters of administration naming the executor or personal representative
- Government-issued photo ID for the executor
- The digital-assets (RUFADAA) authorization clause from the will or trust, if the estate documents contain one
- The email address on the Claude account (Anthropic identifies the account by it)
- The billing platform the subscription was purchased through (Anthropic web, Apple App Store, or Google Play), since cancellation and refund terms differ by platform
- Note: Anthropic publishes no document checklist for deceased-user requests. This list is what the Privacy Policy's "evidence of authorization to act on behalf of the data subject" standard calls for in an estate context; Anthropic may ask for more, or decline.
Timeline
No published SLA for estate or deceased-user requests, because Anthropic publishes no such process. Its stated privacy-request practice is to respond within the period required by the data protection law that applies to the requester, and it names one calendar month under the EU or UK GDPR, extendable by up to two further months for complex or repeated requests. The clocks that do run: a Pro or Max subscription keeps auto-renewing until cancelled, and cancelling less than 24 hours before the next billing date does not stop that period's charge; a data export download link expires 24 hours after delivery; deleted conversations leave chat history immediately and are removed from back-end storage within 30 days; prepaid API credits expire one calendar year from issue and are destroyed if the account is closed; an account inactive for over a year with no paid plan may be terminated by Anthropic with prior notice; and after deletion the account email is blocked from creating a new Claude account for 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
Nothing happens automatically, and that is the problem. Anthropic publishes no bereavement or deceased-user policy, so the account stays open and a Claude Pro or Max subscription keeps auto-renewing against the payment method on file until someone cancels it. The Consumer Terms give Anthropic discretion to delete any Materials or other data associated with the account on termination, and deleted conversations are removed from back-end storage within 30 days. There is no formal estate access process, so an executor writes to Anthropic under the estate's authority rather than following a published one.
No. The Consumer Terms (effective October 8, 2025) prohibit transfer or assignment without Anthropic's prior written consent, and there is no account transfer, inheritance, or succession mechanism for consumer Pro or Max accounts. Anthropic's own export documentation is equally direct about the data: exported data cannot be imported into another personal Claude account, and migrating data between personal accounts is not supported. The one documented migration runs the other way, from a personal account into a Team or Enterprise organization the person joins.
It can ask, and Anthropic decides. Anthropic publishes no deceased-user disclosure process, so there is no channel built for this. What it does publish is a privacy rights intake (privacy@anthropic.com) that accepts a request from a third-party representative acting for a data subject on evidence of authorization to act on their behalf, and a data export that includes conversation data and account data. An executor writes to that intake with the death certificate, letters testamentary or of administration, photo ID, and the digital-assets (RUFADAA) authorization clause from the will or trust, and asks for a catalogue of the account and for the export. The consent clause in the will is what supports a request for the conversations themselves. Anthropic answers at its discretion, and account-to-account migration is not supported in any case.
It keeps charging until it is cancelled. Section 6 of the Consumer Terms provides that a subscription "will automatically renew, and your Payment Method will be charged" for each successive term, and nothing about a death stops that. Who cancels depends on where it was bought. A plan purchased on the web or the desktop app is cancelled in the account's Settings > Billing, and Anthropic asks for that at least 24 hours before the next billing date. A plan purchased through Claude for iOS or Android is billed by Apple or Google, and the Consumer Terms make the App Distributor's payment and refund terms apply instead of Anthropic's, so it is cancelled through the App Store or Google Play. If the estate cannot reach either, the executor can stop the charge at its source by closing or freezing the card it bills, while writing to Anthropic. Pro runs $17 per month on the annual plan or $20 monthly, and Max starts at $100 per month.
They are perishable, and closing the account destroys them. Prepaid credits sit on an Anthropic API account at platform.claude.com (the former console.anthropic.com) and are governed by Anthropic's Supplemental Credit Terms, which state that credits are non-refundable, that Usage Credits expire one calendar year from the date they are issued, that credits are not legal tender and have no cash value, and that a customer may not transfer or sell credits, which "may only be used by the holder of the Anthropic account to which the Credits are associated." The terms also state that credits "will also automatically expire if Customer closes its Anthropic account and cannot be recovered," so an executor should settle what to do about a balance before asking for closure. Watch for one more charge as well: if the Balance Maintenance Service auto-reload was switched on, it keeps charging the payment method on file until someone opts out, and cancelling a Pro or Max subscription does not stop it.
Deleted conversations are removed from chat history immediately and deleted from back-end storage within 30 days. If the user allowed their chats to be used to improve Claude, Anthropic may retain that data in de-identified form for up to 5 years in its model training pipelines. Inputs and outputs flagged by Anthropic's automated trust and safety systems as violating the Usage Policy can be retained for up to 2 years, with classification scores kept up to 7 years, and feedback submissions are retained for 5 years. Account deletion is permanent and forfeits any remaining subscription time.
Not immediately. After a deletion, an attempt to sign up again with the same address returns a message that the email is either associated with an existing account or one that was active within the last 30 days. If the previous account was disabled for Usage Policy violations, Anthropic states that no new account can be created with that email address regardless of any waiting period.
Since Claude accounts are forfeited at death under the official terms, accounts can only be used during the account holder's lifetime. Redeeming, transferring, or sharing accounts while the account is active preserves their value.
Sources
Data sourced from Anthropic PBC primary sources (15 pages reviewed). How we research.
Anthropic Support (Claude Help Center)
Anthropic Privacy Team (no dedicated estate or bereavement team is published)
Anthropic PBC, 548 Market St, PMB 90375, San Francisco, CA 94104
No published SLA for estate or deceased-user requests, because Anthropic publishes no such process. Its stated privacy-request practice is to respond within the period required by the data protection law that applies to the requester, and it names one calendar month under the EU or UK GDPR, extendable by up to two further months for complex or repeated requests. The clocks that do run: a Pro or Max subscription keeps auto-renewing until cancelled, and cancelling less than 24 hours before the next billing date does not stop that period's charge; a data export download link expires 24 hours after delivery; deleted conversations leave chat history immediately and are removed from back-end storage within 30 days; prepaid API credits expire one calendar year from issue and are destroyed if the account is closed; an account inactive for over a year with no paid plan may be terminated by Anthropic with prior notice; and after deletion the account email is blocked from creating a new Claude account for 30 days.
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