David Bush died in August 2015 of lung cancer. He and his wife Peggy lived in Victoria, British Columbia. They owned an Apple desktop computer and an iPad. Peggy, then 71, had been using the iPad to play a card game her late husband had downloaded for her. The hardware passcode, she knew. The Apple ID and its password, she did not. They had been her husband's.^[1]

Some months after David's death, the card game stopped working. Loading any update or making any further App Store transaction required the Apple ID password. Without it, the only path forward was to wipe the iPad, create a new Apple ID, and repurchase everything. Peggy's daughter Donna phoned Apple to ask whether the password could be retrieved or the account reset.^[1]

The first call went well. An Apple representative said it would not be a problem. Donna would need to provide her father's will, a death certificate, and have her mother on the line for verbal confirmation. Donna gathered the documents and called back.^[1]

The runaround

The second call did not go well. The representative had no record of the previous conversation. Donna explained again. After several further calls over a period of two months, she submitted serial numbers for the iPad and the desktop, the will leaving everything to Peggy, and a notarised death certificate. Apple told her none of it was sufficient. She would need a court order.^[1]

Donna asked what level of court order. She wrote a letter to Tim Cook. A customer relations representative eventually called back to confirm that yes, this was the policy. A court order would be required, the kind of court order whose preparation could cost thousands of dollars.^[1]

I could get the pensions, I could get benefits, I could get all kinds of things from the federal government and the other government. But from Apple, I couldn't even get a silly password.

Peggy Bush, speaking to CBC's Go Public unit. The remark captures the asymmetry exactly. Provincial governments, federal pension authorities, and the institutions that handled the title transfers on the house and the car had all accepted the same documents Apple had refused.^[1]

The resolution

The Bushes contacted CBC's Go Public investigative unit. Once CBC contacted Apple for comment, Apple's position changed within hours. The company described the demand as a "misunderstanding," apologised, and resolved Donna's request without any court order. Apple declined to discuss its policy on these matters with CBC, either at the time of the story or in the weeks that followed.^[1]

The terms governing iCloud accounts, at the time, said this on the question of death:

Unless otherwise required by law, You agree that your Account is non-transferable and that any rights to your Apple ID or Content within your Account terminate upon your death.

From Section IV.D of the iCloud Terms ("No Right of Survivorship"). The clause continued: upon receipt of a death certificate, the account "may be terminated and all Content within your Account deleted." There was no other published procedure. The court-order requirement was not in the terms; it was a position taken by individual customer service representatives, applied inconsistently.^[2]

The lag

Apple announced its Digital Legacy programme at WWDC in June 2021. The Legacy Contact feature shipped with iOS 15.2 and macOS 12.1 on December 13, 2021.^[3] Five years and eleven months had passed between the CBC publication of Peggy Bush's case and the platform offering an account holder a way to nominate, in advance, who could access their data after death. The feature is opt-in. It must be set up before death. It does not help anyone who has already lost the password to a deceased relative's account.