Estate planning as a Enterprise Plus account holder

Enterprise Plus is the loyalty program for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, operated by Enterprise Mobility (Enterprise Holdings, Inc.), which also owns National and Alamo. Members earn points on qualifying rentals that are redeemable for Free Rental Days. Membership is open only to individuals -- the Terms & Conditions limit it to people at least 21 years old and exclude "businesses, corporations or other entities" -- and points are personal to the member. Member-to-member transfers are allowed once per calendar year, at Enterprise's sole discretion, and Free Rental Days themselves are non-transferable. Points expire and are forfeited on termination of the membership for any reason or after 36 consecutive months of inactivity. Enterprise publishes no deceased-member process and no death or estate exception to any of those rules, so the balance is in practice lost at death. National's Emerald Club and Alamo Insiders are separate programs with their own terms; National is linked to Enterprise Plus only as a Partner Rewards earning partner.

When a Enterprise Plus account holder dies, their points are forfeited. The program's terms state that points do not constitute property of the account holder and cannot be transferred upon death, by operation of law, or through estate planning documents.

Members can transfer points to other Enterprise Plus participants while their account is active. Fees generally apply, but this is the most direct way to move points to family members.

What happens at death

Enterprise Plus publishes no process for transferring a deceased member's points to an estate, a trust, a beneficiary, or a surviving family member, and no death or divorce exception to any of its rules. An end-to-end scan of the published Terms & Conditions this pass found zero occurrences of deceased, death, died, estate, heir, next of kin, survivor, surviving, personal representative, executor, or beneficiary-as-successor. What the terms do say is that points expire and are forfeited: section 8.d ("Expiration") provides that for members residing in any country other than Austria, Denmark, Germany, or Spain, "points will expire and be forfeited upon the earlier of (i) termination of the Membership for any reason; or (ii) your inactivity for a period of 36 consecutive months." Section 10.a lets Enterprise terminate a membership for any reason at any time with written notice, and gives prolonged inactivity "as we may determine at our sole discretion" as an example. Section 10.b ("Effect of Termination") then provides that on termination for any reason all unused points, Free Rental Days, One Car-Class Upgrade Certificates and other accrued but unredeemed benefits may be forfeited and shall not be reinstated, except where required by applicable law, and that Enterprise has no obligation to provide cash value or compensation for them. The only documented way to move points to another person is a voluntary member-to-member transfer made during the member's lifetime, to an existing Enterprise Plus member in good standing, once per calendar year, and "as Enterprise determines in its sole discretion." Free Rental Days -- the redemption certificates issued from points -- are themselves non-transferable. Membership is limited to individuals, not businesses, corporations or other entities, which is a further reason an estate is not a recipient the program recognises. A survivor's realistic step is to contact Enterprise Plus Member Services to report the death and ask that the account be closed.