Originally Posted by
jjbiv
I would plan to use the points as quickly as possible. It wouldn't surprise me if major loyalty programs (like airlines) used the Social Security master death file to purge accounts belonging to the deceased.
From my experience with my father (who died 8 years ago), that is simply not the case with most programs. All of his accounts continue to exist without any purging today. That includes Delta, Southwest, IHG, and several others. A couple I've finally let the few points left expire because it wasn't worth doing anything about, but none of them took any action based on his passing 8+ years ago.