Estate planning as a Hulu account holder

Hulu is a streaming platform offering on-demand TV shows, movies, and Hulu Originals, with an optional Hulu + Live TV plan that includes Cloud DVR. An account holds multiple profiles, each with its own watchlist (My Stuff), viewing history, and saved settings. All content is licensed, not owned, and the Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu Subscriber Agreement states that purchasing a license to stream or temporarily download Content does not create an ownership interest in it. Accounts and profiles are non-transferable. Hulu has no published bereavement policy, and the shared subscriber agreement reserves the right to terminate subscriptions that remain inactive for more than one year. Hulu content is also surfaced inside the Disney+ app under a shared MyDisney login, but the standalone Hulu app remains available and Hulu + Live TV and premium add-ons are still managed there.

Under Hulu's terms, accounts 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.

What happens at death

Hulu has no published deceased-user policy. The Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu Subscriber Agreement (shared across all three services) grants a "limited, personal use, non-transferable, non-assignable, revocable, non-exclusive and non-sublicensable right" to use the Services, and it does not address death of the subscriber at all -- the words death, deceased, and estate do not appear in it. Hulu publishes no dedicated bereavement page, form, or estate contact channel. The practical estate action is cancellation followed by account deletion: cancellation stops future billing, and access to streamed content ends with the subscription. Two things do survive the forfeited license, and both are what a written request to Hulu can reach. The first is the billing record -- Hulu keeps past and upcoming charges in a Billing History section on the account page, which an executor cannot open without the account login. The second is money already paid in: the agreement does not owe proration, but it expressly reserves refunds and credits "ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS IN OUR SOLE AND ABSOLUTE DISCRETION," and the help center separately states that Hulu "may issue refunds in its sole discretion." Neither is owed to the estate; both are requestable. The agreement also reserves the right to terminate subscriptions that remain inactive for more than one year, but that is a right Hulu holds rather than an automatic process, and billing continues in the meantime.