Actually, as long as it is in good standing and the country is NOT one US has sanctions against the account would be left running, we would not delete an account just because the country isn't in current white list, just means that people in other countries can't get a new account at this time.
As for having someone else pay for you, that would be fine, but the upgrade needs to be done through your account portal which means you'd have to give them access to log in there and go through the payment steps for it to work.