Death is inevitable but we still seem flummoxed by it happening. We have all kinds of End of Life policies and procedures which do everything possible to make life difficult for those left behind.
Our language is around loss and unexpected, and grief and being bereft.
Why do we make Death so hard to process in our community and what can we do to normalise it across society?
This may depend on jurisdiction. Joint accounts were not frozen in my case. A death certificate was only required to remove the deceased party from the accounts.
In my case I was able to present the death certificate to the providers and the accounts were quickly closed, with the appropriate billing and hardware returns. It was no more inconvenient than a normal return.
I was fortunate. The deceased planned ahead and did all of the things I haven’t done: arranging a funeral and burial, keeping their will up to date, writing down their usernames/passwords, and making the appropriate joint bank accounts.
My experience was with established services in mature sectors: they have procedures for dealing with deceased customers’ accounts. It was relatively convenient, even at a really shitty time.
Newer services don’t have that institutional experience. They haven’t existed long enough. But they’re starting to: Facebook has the concept of deceased users. As time goes on, more “new” services will as well.