How to Create a Facebook Memorial Page, and What It Can’t Do

What Facebook offers when someone dies

Facebook has no single “memorial page” button. The exact steps change from time to time, so search Facebook’s Help Center for “memorialized account”; here are the options in outline.

Memorializing the profile

A relative or a friend can ask Facebook to memorialize the account, through a form in its Help Center, with a link to the profile, the date of death and a document that confirms it, such as a death notice or a death certificate. Once the account is memorialized:

• The word “Remembering” appears next to the person’s name.
• Everything they shared (photographs, posts) stays on Facebook, visible to the same people as before.
• Depending on the privacy settings, friends can share memories on the profile.
• The profile no longer appears in friend suggestions, ads or birthday reminders.
• Nobody can log in to it. Facebook does not give the password to anyone, family included.

The legacy contact

A legacy contact is someone the person chose in their own settings, while alive, to look after the account once it is memorialized. If there is one, they can:

• write a pinned post at the top of the profile: the funeral details, say, or a few words from the family;
• change the profile picture and cover photo;
• respond to new friend requests;
• ask for the account to be removed;
• download a copy of what the person shared, only if the person allowed it, and without their private messages.

A legacy contact cannot log in, read messages or remove friends, and in most cases nothing can be deleted from a memorialized account. Without a legacy contact, a memorialized account cannot be changed at all.

Removing the account instead

If the person chose a legacy contact, only the legacy contact can ask Facebook to remove the account. If not, immediate family members or the executor of the estate can ask, with a death certificate and a document showing that they are close family or the executor. People can also choose in advance, in their settings, to have their account deleted after they die. Before asking for removal, save the photographs and posts you want to keep: once the account is gone, so are they.

A group or a page in their memory

Many families simply open a Facebook group (“In memory of David”) and invite friends and relatives. A group can be private, and its admins can turn on post approval, so that nothing appears until one of them has read it. It is the quickest way to share the funeral time and the shiva address, and people post photographs there that the family has never seen. To write in it, you need a Facebook account. How to word a death announcement

Facebook or a memorial page of its own: what actually differs

Facebook’s great strength is that everyone is already there: within an hour the news reaches people you would never have thought to call. But it was not built to keep one life in one place for years. The difference shows in five places:

• Who is in charge. Nobody can log in to a memorialized profile, and friends post on it according to its settings. A group belongs to its admins, for as long as they stay active. A dedicated page is kept by the family, and each memory can wait for their approval, which matters on a page the grandchildren will read.
• A story, not a feed. Facebook shows the newest things first: the death notice, a hundred condolences, a birthday post two years later. Where she was born and how she met your father are nowhere in particular, and the photographs are scattered across dozens of accounts. A memorial page begins with the life story, with the photographs, recordings and memories beside it.
• Ads and algorithms. Facebook is paid for by advertising, and each person’s feed is chosen by an algorithm. A post about your mother appears between a holiday photo and an ad, and a day later it is hard to find. A memorial page is about her alone.
• Relatives who are not on Facebook. The aunt who never had an account, the cousin who only uses WhatsApp, the grandchildren ten years from now. A dedicated page opens in any browser for anyone with the link, and its address can go in the death notice, on an invitation and behind a QR code on the headstone. QR codes on headstones
• Keeping it. On Facebook, everything stays under Facebook’s rules, which change from time to time, and a legacy contact can download what the person shared only if allowed to. Whatever memorial page you choose, ask whether you can download everything, and whether it opens without the service that made it.

Many families use both

This is not a choice of one or the other. Facebook, like the family group chat, is good at the first days: the funeral time, the shiva address, who is bringing food. A memorial page is for what stays: the story, the photographs, the voice, and what people remember. Put its link in the group, or in the pinned post if you are the legacy contact, and ask the people posting photographs on Facebook to add them to the page too. How to collect memories and photographs from family

Place a Stone is one such page: the life story, photographs and recordings, and, once the page is open, the memories relatives and friends send in (each one appearing only after the family approves it) and a candle any visitor can light. The whole page can be downloaded at any time and opens without us, and once a year the family receives a copy of its archive. A QR plaque for the headstone is coming soon; it is not on sale yet. How to create an online memorial page