Estate planning as a HelloFresh account holder

HelloFresh is a meal-kit subscription that ships recipe boxes on a recurring weekly schedule and bills the cardholder automatically until the plan is cancelled or each delivery is skipped. The US service is operated by Grocery Delivery E-Services USA, Inc. The estate-relevant value sits inside the account rather than in a transferable asset: a HelloFresh Cash credit balance (customer top-ups capped at $400, plus referral, promotional, and Customer Care credits), gift-card balances, and HelloFresh Rewards points earned at ten points per dollar spent. All of it is redeemable only as future boxes inside that one account. HelloFresh publishes no deceased-account process, the Terms of Use state the holder has no ownership interest in the account, and HelloFresh reserves the right to withdraw promotional, discount, and compensation credits on cancellation, so the balance is generally lost when the account closes.

Under HelloFresh's terms, credits are not property of the account holder and are forfeited when the account closes at death. No estate planning document—will, trust, or otherwise—can override this forfeiture.

HelloFresh offers a gift purchase option for credits. Members can buy credits for others or redeem their own credits to benefit family and friends.

What happens at death

A HelloFresh account and subscription are personal and non-transferable. Section 4.3 of the Terms of Use provides that "You acknowledge and agree that you shall have no ownership or other property interest in your Account, and you further acknowledge and agree that all rights in and to your Account are and shall forever be owned by and inure to the benefit of HelloFresh," and that "You may not share your Account or password with anyone." HelloFresh publishes no deceased-account or estate-transfer process. The estate-relevant value is what sits inside the account: a HelloFresh Cash balance, any gift-card balance, and HelloFresh Rewards points. The HelloFresh Cash Funds terms state that these funds "can only be used on your customer account, and cannot be transferred to other accounts or individuals" and "cannot be redeemed for cash or otherwise claimed," and that HelloFresh "reserves the right to expire and withdraw your HelloFresh Cash funds that have been issued as promotions, discounts or compensation, upon your account cancellation." The help center says the same thing in plainer words: most credits, including referral bonuses, promotional offers, and Customer Care compensation, "are only available while your account is active and will be removed upon cancellation of your subscription," and the cancellation flow shows the exact amount of HelloFresh Cash that will be lost before it completes. HelloFresh Rewards points expire on cancellation of the subscription or after twelve months of inactivity. Gift-card balances are on a different footing and this distinction matters to an estate: the gift-card terms state that a balance "will remain in the recipient's HelloFresh account and will not expire," and the HelloFresh Cash terms carve out "credits from Gift Cards or payments originated by you" from the expiration-and-withdrawal provision. Gift-card and voucher balances still cannot be moved to another account and are "non-refundable" and not redeemable for cash "except as required by law." So the account cannot be inherited and the promotional credit is lost on closure, while a gift-card-funded or customer-funded balance is left stranded in a closed account rather than expressly forfeited. Separately, the subscription bills on recurring weekly charges that auto-renew until the plan is cancelled or each week is skipped, so an unmanaged account keeps charging the decedent's payment card.

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