After my dad died, I had the unenviable task of managing his estate while working full-time and living in another state. One task was to contact credit card companies to cancel his accounts. He had MANY credit cards open because the person who lived with him up until 2006 (2 years before his death) was stealing from him and opening lines of credit under his name. I canceled quite a few credit cards in 2006 but there were still a couple open when he died.