What happens to Meta Ads accounts when the owner dies

Yes, and this is the urgent part. Live campaigns keep showing ads and billing the payment method on file, or drawing down a prepaid available-funds balance, until someone pauses them, the funds run out, or the payment method fails. Meta has no way to know the advertiser has died. If someone already holds an admin or finance-editor role in the business portfolio, they can pause every campaign in Ads Manager; a paused campaign stops delivering new ads and stops accruing new charges, though a final charge can still post for costs already accrued. If nobody holds a role, the estate's lever is the card or bank account being billed.

Meta's Self-Serve Ad Terms say prepaid amounts, which they call an "Advertiser Balance," "are not legal tender or currency; are not redeemable, refundable (except where required by law or compliance or otherwise stated in our terms)... and do not constitute or confer upon you any personal property right." Meta's help center separately says refund decisions are final and made on a case-by-case basis, and there is no published estate-recovery path for an advertiser's balance. An estate can ask Meta to return an unspent balance to the payment method it came from, but nothing in Meta's terms commits it to do so. The practical safeguard is to keep prepaid balances low while alive.

No. The personal Facebook account that owns the ad account is non-transferable: the Meta Terms of Service have users agree not to "transfer your account to anyone else (without our permission)" and state "No Transfer: You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else without our consent." The Commercial Terms carry the same bar on the business side. The ad account is reached through role-based access inside the business portfolio, not through ownership, and Meta publishes no path for adding an estate to a portfolio after a death.

Almost entirely. An admin has full control over the business portfolio's settings, people, accounts, and tools; a finance editor can edit payment methods and financial details such as transactions, invoices, and account spend; lower roles are limited to assigned assets and tasks. If the decedent granted someone an admin or finance role while alive, that person can pause campaigns, pull billing records, and open a support case immediately. If nobody holds a role, there is no self-service way to add the estate and no published Meta channel that does it either.

Pause the campaigns first, because that is the only step where money is leaving the estate every hour. Then identify the ad accounts and the business portfolio from the decedent's records — receipts, invoices, and card statements — rather than from the decedent's login. Then write to Meta Business Support asking it to preserve the account, produce the billing records, and state what it requires to return any unspent prepaid balance. Handle the personal Facebook account's memorialization or removal last: removing the owning account forecloses what is left of the ad-account path.

It overlaps but it is not the same. The personal Facebook account has a real published process — memorialization by default, or permanent removal — covering the profile, Legacy Contact, Meta Pay, Pages and Groups, and creator monetization. The ad account has none, and adds two problems that no memorialization form solves: ad spend that does not stop at death, and a prepaid balance Meta's terms describe as non-refundable except where required by law. Both hang off the same personal login, so coordinate them, and address the ad account before the owning account is memorialized or removed.