My parents had a free safe deposit box "for life" at a Great Western Bank in California. They passed away and the bank let me have the free deposit box as long as I maintained my checking account with Great Western. Great Western Bank was bought-out by Home Savings, which honored the free deposit box agreement also. Home Savings was then bought-out by Washington Mutual, which also honored the original agreement. I moved out of state and closed the deposit box. A couple of years later I closed my checking account with Washington Mutual before they failed and were taken over by Chase. I wonder if Chase would have honored the original agreement? Probably not.