I don't think that your family can request control of your account, but they can request that it is deleted (or hidden, I don't know what FB does internally).
I've had friends who've passed away, and their facebook is still up; people write messages on their wall every once in a while saying that they miss them and so forth, so in a sense, it becomes like a virtual memorial. I've also read stories about families that wanted their deceased relative's facebook account deleted, but they didn't know any of the security questions or other information, so Facebook wouldn't delete it.
I think a good solution would be for Facebook to automatically deactivate (but not delete) your account if you haven't logged in for a year. Thus, if you ever go away for a while, forget about your account, etc. it will be there when you get back, but if you've died, it's automatically removed (in a sense).
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I don't think that your family can request control of your account, but they can request that it is deleted (or hidden, I don't know what FB does internally).
I've had friends who've passed away, and their facebook is still up; people write messages on their wall every once in a while saying that they miss them and so forth, so in a sense, it becomes like a virtual memorial. I've also read stories about families that wanted their deceased relative's facebook account deleted, but they didn't know any of the security questions or other information, so Facebook wouldn't delete it.
I think a good solution would be for Facebook to automatically deactivate (but not delete) your account if you haven't logged in for a year. Thus, if you ever go away for a while, forget about your account, etc. it will be there when you get back, but if you've died, it's automatically removed (in a sense).