Estate planning as a Patreon account holder

Patreon is a membership platform where creators earn recurring revenue from subscribers (patrons). Two very different estate cases apply. A deceased creator's account holds a patron base, monthly recurring revenue, a content archive, and accumulated earnings; subscriptions keep billing and payouts keep flowing until someone logs in. A deceased patron's account holds active recurring pledges that continue billing the estate until cancelled. Patreon has no published bereavement policy and the Terms of Use are silent on death; the Team Lead role cannot be transferred, and accounts are explicitly non-transferable.

When a Patreon account holder dies, their accounts may be transferred to a designated person at Patreon, Inc.'s sole discretion. A transfer is not guaranteed, and satisfactory documentation is required before processing any request.

What happens at death

Patreon has no published bereavement or deceased-user policy. The Terms of Use, in the "Restrictions" subsection of "All about being a creator," state verbatim: "An account is tied to your creative output and cannot be sold or transferred for use by another creator." The TOS refund clause states: "Our policy is not to provide refunds, including if you lose access to offerings and/or membership subscription benefits as described above, though we may allow for some exceptions where refunds are granted at our sole discretion." The Team Lead role (account owner with sole access to payout and account settings) "cannot be transferred from one account to another" per the Patreon Help Center Team Lead permissions article. The TOS contains zero provisions addressing death, bereavement, succession, inheritance, estate, executor, or next-of-kin. In practice: creator subscriptions continue billing patrons automatically, payouts continue flowing to the linked bank account, and patron pledges continue billing the deceased's card or bank. If the account goes inactive with no login for an extended period, unclaimed funds are remitted as unclaimed property - to the creator's state for US creators, and to Delaware (Patreon's state of incorporation) after 60 months for non-US creators. The only contact paths are a support request at support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/requests/new and legal@patreon.com for formal legal requests.