What happens to MileagePlus miles when the owner dies

The rules provide that "In the event of the death or divorce of a Member, United may, in its sole discretion, credit all or a portion of such Member's accrued mileage to authorized persons upon receipt of documentation satisfactory to United and payment of applicable fees." That is a discretion United reserves, not an entitlement. In practice the request is opened on the MileagePlus Service Center line, supported by a certified death certificate and a signed, notarized affidavit from the executor or administrator, and each proposed recipient must already hold their own MileagePlus account.

There is no time-based expiry, but there is urgency, and for a reason that is easy to miss. The "Mileage expiration" section of the MileagePlus rules says accrued mileage stays in the account "until it is redeemed for an award or until it is otherwise forfeited pursuant to" a list of triggers, and that list expressly includes "(e) the death of a Member." Forfeiture on death is the rules' stated default; the discretionary credit is the exception to it. The same list also includes failure to respond to repeated communication attempts about the account. Opening the request early, and asking United to hold the balance while it is reviewed, is the sensible course.

The rules condition the discretionary credit on "payment of applicable fees," but United does not publish a fee schedule for a death-of-member transfer. Ask the MileagePlus Service Center at 1-800-421-4655 what the fee will be before proceeding, so you can weigh it against the value of the balance. For comparison, an ordinary lifetime transfer between members costs $7.50 per 500 miles plus a $30.00 processing fee per transaction; whether that pricing is applied to a death-of-member credit is not stated anywhere United publishes.

The Miles pooling Terms and Conditions address this directly, and the answer differs by role. If the POOL LEADER dies, the pool is dissolved; on dissolution the miles in the pool are split evenly and returned among the members, and the share returned to the deceased member's own MileagePlus account is then "handled in accordance with the Program Rules" — which is to say it falls back into the discretionary regime above. If an ordinary POOL MEMBER dies, the terms state the miles remain in the pool and the pool continues without that member.

Miles earned on a United co-branded credit card are credited to the cardholder's MileagePlus account and are governed by the MileagePlus rules once there, including the statement that accrued mileage does not constitute property of the member, the discretionary death-of-member credit, and the death forfeiture trigger. The card account and the MileagePlus account are separate matters: contact the card issuer about the card and the MileagePlus Service Center about the miles.