In the first days, do exactly one thing
You do not need to decide anything about the phone in the first week, and it is worth saying that plainly, because grief has a way of making every object in the house feel urgent at once. There is one thing worth doing early, and it is smaller than it sounds: keep the phone charged, and keep it somewhere it will not be misplaced in the chaos of a difficult week.
The reason this matters more than it seems to is that a phone which runs out of charge and sits untouched for weeks can, on some devices, trigger extra security steps when it is eventually turned back on, of the kind that make getting in later noticeably harder. Plug it in, leave it in a drawer if that is easier than looking at it, and come back to the rest when you are ready.
Everything else, the accounts, the photographs, the subscriptions, will still be there in a month. None of it is going anywhere on its own in the first few weeks. Give yourself that time.
Getting into the phone itself
The passcode is the single most useful piece of information in this entire process, because on a modern phone it is very often also the master key to the accounts stored on it, including the ability to reset an Apple ID or Google account password from the device itself. If there is any note, diary, or password manager that might hold it, that is the first place to look.
If nobody knows the passcode, do not guess repeatedly. Most phones lock you out for longer and longer periods after a handful of wrong attempts, and after enough failed attempts some devices erase themselves entirely as a security measure. A few careful guesses based on a birthday or anniversary is reasonable; anything beyond that is a real risk, not a shortcut.
Fingerprint or face unlock usually stops working within a short window after the phone has not been touched, so do not count on being able to use those, and do not delay for that reason. If the phone is genuinely locked and nobody has the code, skip ahead to the section on what to do when you cannot get in, rather than losing weeks to guessing.
What's actually on it that matters
Once you are in, it helps to know what you are actually looking for, because "go through the phone" is a task with no natural end and "find these four things" is a task you can finish.
The photographs matter most and are usually the most time-sensitive, for reasons covered in the next section. After that, look for anything that functions as a password list: a notes app entry, a password manager, a physical notebook the phone might reference. Then look at which apps are actually being used, particularly banking apps and anything with a recurring subscription attached, since those carry real financial consequences if left running.
You do not need to read messages or open every app out of some sense of duty. Most families find it more respectful, not less, to focus on what is practically necessary and leave the rest alone.
“You do not need to decide anything about the phone in the first week. Keep it charged, and come back to the rest when you are ready.”
Get the photographs off first, before anything else
If you do only one practical thing beyond keeping the phone charged, make it this: copy the photographs and videos somewhere else, as soon as you reasonably can once you have access.
The reason this comes before closing accounts or cancelling plans is that photographs are the thing most at risk of being lost permanently by an action taken for an entirely different reason. A carrier account gets closed to stop the monthly bill, and the phone that was backing up to a cloud account tied to that same phone number quietly loses its connection. A phone gets factory reset by a well-meaning relative trying to sell it or hand it down, without checking first whether everything on it had already been saved elsewhere.
Plug the phone into a computer and copy the full camera roll onto a drive, or use the phone's own cloud service to download everything while the account is still active. Do this before you touch anything else. It takes an afternoon, and it is the one step in this whole process that cannot be undone if it is missed.
The phone plan is not the same problem as the phone itself
These are two separate things, and treating them as one causes most of the confusion families run into. The phone is a device holding data. The phone plan is a recurring account with a carrier, and it keeps being billed regardless of whether anybody is using the phone.
Contact the carrier once you are ready, not urgently, and ask about closing or transferring the account. Most carriers have a specific bereavement process for exactly this situation, and it usually asks for a death certificate rather than for you to somehow prove ownership of a device you are physically holding. Keep the number active for a little longer if it is used for two-factor authentication on other accounts, since disconnecting it can lock you out of those before you have had a chance to update them.
Do not rush to cancel the plan the moment you remember it exists. A month or two of an extra bill is a far smaller problem than losing access to a phone number that half a dozen other accounts still quietly rely on for verification.
When you cannot get in at all
Sometimes the phone is locked, nobody has the passcode, and there is no note anywhere with a clue. This happens more often than families expect, and it is not the dead end it feels like at first.
Apple and Google both have processes for next of kin to request certain access or a full account transfer after a death, generally requiring a death certificate and proof of your relationship. These processes are slow, sometimes taking several weeks, and they do not always grant everything you ask for, but they exist precisely because this situation is common. Search the current process for the specific device and account rather than trusting a guide's description of steps that change over time.
If the phone itself cannot be unlocked but photographs were also backed up to a computer, an old laptop, or another family member's shared album at some point, that backup may already hold what you are looking for, so it is worth checking those before assuming everything is trapped on the device.
There is no correct pace for this
Some families want the phone dealt with within days, because an unresolved task feels like something to get through before grieving can properly begin. Other families cannot look at it for six months, because the phone is one of the last things that still has their parent's actual voice notes and messages on it, and dealing with it feels like a second loss.
Both are normal, and there is no version of this that has to happen on anybody else's timeline. The one genuine deadline is the photographs, because those are the thing an unrelated action, a cancelled plan, a factory reset, a lapsed cloud subscription, can take from you by accident. Handle that step whenever you are ready, and let everything else wait for as long as it needs to.
The short version
Keep the phone charged and do not guess the passcode repeatedly. Once you are in, copy the photographs off before you do anything else, since that is the one step an unrelated action can undo by accident.
Treat the phone and the phone plan as two separate problems, and do not rush to cancel the plan if the number is still verifying other accounts. If you cannot get in at all, next of kin processes exist at Apple and Google specifically for this, even though they are slow.
Beyond the photographs, there is no deadline here. Deal with the rest whenever it stops feeling like too much.
Not ready to start a vault yet?
Download our free Digital Legacy Checklist PDF instead. A short, practical starting point for organizing what matters. No account required.
