Planning ahead for your YouTube accounts
Steps you can take now to control who receives Google LLC accounts
YouTube Help
Google Deceased User Requests (and AdSense rightful heir claims)
Google, Inc., Attn: Google Legal Support, AdSense Support, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
Google LLC does not guarantee transfer of accounts after death. Lifetime planning provides options for managing accounts and controlling who has access to them.
How to protect your YouTube accounts
7 lifetime planning steps for your YouTube accounts:
Family sharing
YouTube channels on personal Google accounts cannot be transferred. However, channels linked to Brand Accounts can have multiple owners and managers. An owner can add others by going to the Brand Accounts section of their Google Account, selecting the account, choosing "Manage permissions," then "Invite new users." Each Brand Account must have one primary owner. To become primary owner, a user must be an owner for at least 7 days, then on the Brand Account permissions page click the down arrow next to their name, select "Primary owner," then "Transfer." Channel ownership can effectively be transferred by adding a new owner and the original owner removing themselves. This is the key estate planning mechanism: if a creator sets up their channel under a Brand Account and adds a trusted person as an owner before death, that person retains full access without needing Google's deceased user process. YouTube's newer [channel permissions system](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9481328) explicitly "can't transfer ownership to other users" -- only Brand Account roles enable true ownership succession, even though [channel permissions are now the recommended day-to-day delegation model](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9367690). Separately, Google's [Inactive Account Manager](https://myaccount.google.com/inactive) allows pre-configuring up to 10 trusted contacts to receive YouTube data (exports, not account access) after a configurable inactivity timeout.
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
An inventory listing the YouTube account lets a fiduciary identify it and act on it through the operator's official channels.
Sources
Data sourced from Google LLC primary sources (13 pages reviewed). How we research.
YouTube Help
Google Deceased User Requests (and AdSense rightful heir claims)
Google, Inc., Attn: Google Legal Support, AdSense Support, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
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