How to access data from deceased Apple customers without a lawyer

TidBITS Talk
1

Hi folks!

Looking for some help here.

My sister passed away several months ago. She had an iPhone, an iPad, and an iCloud account. She didn’t own any other computers.

Besides needing access to her email and cellular account in order to handle matters of her estate, I also want to get access to the many recordings she made as a songwriter. Many of these songs have never been published and don’t exist anywhere else, and her publisher is eager to produce more of her content. And what a great tribute that would be to her.

Plus, since these devices are activated under her iCloud account, they’re bricks at this point that can’t be used or resold until that is unlocked, right?

Anyway, back to logistics. Here’s where everyone sends you:

For no cost, I was about to get the Register of Wills to prepare, on court letterhead, an Affidavit with all the details, completely with her seal and signature. After waiting months for Apple to respond, I finally got clarification of why they rejected it: it has to be a Court Order.

Unfortunately, the Register of Wills says their entire county has never had such a request. She said my situation is unique. But it seems to me that there might be thousands of people dying every day with Apple devices that family members are going to want to get into. If it’s not a major challenge now, it’s probably getting worse daily.

So, I was referred me to a lawyer who wants $750 (plus the filing fee) to do this for me. But here’s the thing: I already have all the legal paperwork (the “Short Form” and the “Letters of Administration”) appointing me to process her estate. I should have legal access to everything, and she confirmed that. The banks have no problem letting me access her funds, for example. Only Apple is ignoring this authority and asking for a Court Order.

So I guess I have a few questions:

  1. why is Apple being difficult?

  2. is there a non-lawyer / affordable way to get a Court Order drawn up? This should be a wheel that has already been invented 1000 times over and it would be nice to have a simple template I can fill out and submit to get this done.

Thoughts?? Help??

Thanks!

2

I don’t have any legal advice for you but this Take Control e-book might be useful

Fortunately I helped a relative set up their Apple account so I was able to log into that account and tidy things up when they died a few years ago.

It does seem worth giving your various login details to a trusted relative/friend as a contigency.

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3

I have been helping family members with estate stuff, both planning and implementation. A very valuable resource, if you are in the US, has been books from Nolo, a publisher that specializes in helping people to either handle legal activities themselves or get solid background knowledge before retaining a lawyer.

…plus many public libraries hold Nolo titles in their Reference section.

ETA
I am not a legal professional. Keeping that in mind, I’ve seen that companies vary a lot when handling the transfer of property after the death of the owner. For example, some financial institutions accept copies of a death certificate and living trust documents while others insist on receiving a certified death certificate and an employee viewing living trust documents with the original signatures and notary stamps. The common thread is that firms want to verify that an executor or trustee is legitimate and that property is transferred according to the terms of a will or living trust.

So Apple’s policy might be to not transfer accounts unless they are included in a living trust or a will has completed probate.

4

Have you spoken to “Apple” ? and verified the “Need a Court Order”? Ask for a supervisor. Don’t forget to get the persons Name and contact information. You might be able to have APPLE delete the accounts and unlock the devices without you needing access to them with the documents you have.

5

Every thief in the world wants to unlock devices so they can be resold.

“But I’m not a thief!”

That’s exactly what thieves say.

I agree that this probably comes up a thousand times a day. That’s why there’s a process. I think you’re probably going to have to follow it.

Sorry for your loss.

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6

Thanks! I’ve been a big fan of Nolo for years. Shortly before I made my OP, was on a chat with Nolo a few times. They kept referring me to a lawyer. I kept saying I already got a quote from a lawyer, which is why I’m approaching Nolo… and isn’t the whole point of Nolo to offer a do-it-yourself solution to save you from lawyer fees? Strangely, I couldn’t get a straight answer about whether they had a book or software that could help me here; they really wanted me to talk to a lawyer. The lawyer they referred me to, oddly, has a phone # that immediately gives an error message; and their web site comes up as not having a valid certificate. I also mentioned that to Nolo, but again they were no help. Very disappointed in Nolo.

I don’t know; they didn’t ask about any of that. Maybe they don’t want to think that hard, and that’s why they are asking for a Court Order?

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7

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, Kori has been helping me, mostly by proxying my request to Apple’s legal team, which has a several-month turnaround time.

It would be a shame to abandon all hope of getting access to her musical recordings. But yes, if we went that route and walked away from all her data, I’m also curious if it would take something less than a Court Order just to have everything wiped (Activation Lock disabled) so we can at least reuse or sell her devices. I have a query into Kori about the latter…

8

Thanks for your words.

Yea, I get it. But I’m not sure that’s the whole story. Like I said, I have legal paperwork to administer the estate, on county letterhead and with a raised seal. If they get a Court Order, it’s just going to be another piece of paper with a seal. It won’t be any harder for a thief to fake that than what I’ve already provided.

From following Apple over the years, I think the issue lies with Apple’s sense of responsibility for maintaining privacy on a level that they don’t think the rest of the legal process handles adequately.

But I’m not convinced Apple’s logic is sound. Like I mentioned above, and the Register confirmed: only Apple requires this order; all her other assets were handed over to me with the Short Form. They could argue that setting an iCloud password was a contract she made with Apple that can survive her death. But you can also argue that that password only needed to protect her while she was alive – which is literally how everything else in an estate gets managed (this is now the 4th family member’s estate I’m executing).

Anyway, back to my main topic: any way to get a Court Order without hiring a lawyer?? Does anyone have a template or instructions??

9

First, I forgot to offer my condolences for your loss in my earlier post. I hope you are not finding it too hard to both grieve and work on your sister’s estate.

Re Nolo: two titles I’ve found especially helpful are The Trustee’s Legal Companion and How to Probate an Estate. I’ve had them for awhile so I don’t know offhand if they are still in print. If not, perhaps your local library will have them.

Re property transfers: again, keeping in mind I am not a legal professional, my experience has been that when it comes to providing access to property or transferring ownership of property, companies are very careful. Firms with fiduciary duty, of course, are the most careful. Apple’s stringent policy, though, is probably due to its status as a high profile, extremely rich company. Any fraudulent or improper transfer would attract lots of negative media coverage and lawsuits, especially given the types of data many people store with Apple.

Next, I took a quick look at my Nolo probate book. I believe being a trustee or an executor is separate from being legally authorized to distribute assets or take over property. With wills, it seems that the last step in probate is for the executor to obtain a formal court order that confirms the instructions in the will and authorizes the executor to follow the instructions. So given what I said about Apple above, I don’t feel Apple is being lazy or obstinate. Apple seems to want to ensure that it won’t take the irreversible step of transferring control of an account before the proper time.

On a personal level, Apple’s policy is similar to what my family members have had to follow with other companies. While some transfers were completed with a single phone call or appointment, others have been a multiple step process that took weeks to finish.

ETA: another potential reason for Apple requiring a court order is that wills and probate proceedings become part of the public record. That means Apple can independently verify documents and forms submitted to it.

10

We went a different way since our financial advisor does estate planning for us for no additional charge…set up a trust with all the instructions in it and retitled all our assets except cars and home to the trust. So…even though the trust package includes pour over wills there’s essentially nothing in the estate except the cars…the house will go to our son directly outside of probate using the Lady Bird Johnson deed that Florida allows (essentially it’s like a transfer on death for an account but for property). The biggest reason for doing this was to mostly avoid probate because in Florida the law allows the lawyers to extract an exorbitant percentage of of the estate being probated for relatively little work. Most don’t charge the full amount for competitive reasons of course but better not to get into the possibility at all. Plus…if we decide to change things around it’s a simple notarized by the lawyer here in FL of a letter changing the distribution and sending the original up to the financial advisor in the DC metro area. As a side effect we also got living wills and turn off the machine letters and organ donation letters along with the whole package being handled by an actual estate specialist lawyer instead of a generalist like we used to have so all of the contingency plans if beneficiaries die first or we all die together in the plane crash or something.

I did my parents wills and was going to do do my sisters but by the time she passed her oldest daughter was an adult and I was able to resign in favor of her being the executor…but maybe that was just a Tennessee thing.

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11

Can’t answer that one…but my wife and I both have each other’s passwords and they’re also available to our son once we’re gone do we don’t really plan on telling Apple we’ve assumed room temperature until which ever of us is left (or the son) has gotten what is needed.

IANAL of course but I think there’s no way to get a court order without a lawyer although one of the online legal websites might be able to do it cheaper than 750…but then you would need to pay whatever that site costs.

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12

Too late for the OP, unfortunately, but this seems like a good place to remind others that Apple allows you to designate a legacy contact for this situation.

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13

You want to know the real rub here?

Somehow, my sister’s phone was unlocked when she passed. She was home alone, and the neighbor found her in her bed. When the coroner arrived, she attempted to figure out what happened and started going through her iPhone, which was unlocked. Maybe it was set to not lock?

So when I finally got there, it was still unlocked, and I was able to get to her email, respond to MFA text messages, etc, and that was invaluable to getting countless auto-bills disabled and items refunded. I operated for weeks that way, making sure I kept the phone powered on.

But one day, out of reflex, I accidentally pressed the lock button. At that point, I was locked out, and I have never been able to get back in.

You might say I should have tried to reset the passcode or her iCloud password before I waited that long. But I had a strong feeling that starting that process was going to force me to authenticate, or reboot, or something that would lock me out of the device, and then I would have no access to email or texts. I wanted to make sure important business matters were dealt with before resetting all her Apple credentials. Sadly, I screwed up, and I stormed around the house kicking myself for a few days before coming to terms with it :-)

Months later, I’m facing a huge bill and huge delays in an effort to get back into her devices.

Oh well.

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14

I think you would have had to enter the “current” passcode/password in order to change them on an unlocked iPhone so your slip-up would not have changed things, other than losing access to emails and texts.

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15

Depending on the state you may not need a lawyer for a court order. You can file the necessary paperwork with the court yourself. In smaller jurisdictions the clerk of courts may be willing to help with the filing.

16

Yes, thanks. I don’t think I need a lawyer. But I do need a Court Order. And some back and forth with the Register, who helped me prepare the Affidavit, with questions about how to word the Court Order and the steps to follow, etc, made her continue to urge me to see a lawyer. And she’s not the type who would have said that out of concern about liability or to be dismissive; she really felt it was more complex, and this was someone who went out of her way to get the wording in the Affidavit perfect.

For example, she said that if I don’t write the request to the judge perfectly, he’ll reject it and he won’t tell me why. If I had a simple sample template for how to work this Court Order, I might be fine.

17

Dude, don’t be a hero. Get a lawyer.

18

I may, but:

  1. It’s at LEAST $750 that I don’t have sitting around, and
  2. If I can help figure this out, I’ll post my results here, and there could be countless other people who will benefit from the non-lawyer solution.
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19

Okay, but from experience in a somewhat similar situation, I did the hero thing for over a year and then had to get a lawyer anyway.

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20

Possibly find a lawyer who will do it for less than $750.
Everything is negotiable.

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