Apple forces UK widow to get court order to retrieve dead husband’s photos for their 10-year-old daughter

May 13-- May 13--Matt Thompson died in July 2015 and left no will. It took four years and a court order for his widow to get Apple to release his photos and videos so that she could share them with their young daughter.

When Thompson committed suicide in 2015, he left behind 4,500 photos, 900 videos and a now 10-year-old daughter, as well as a grieving wife.

The archive contained a record of their life together, his wife, Rachel Thompson, told The Times of London. But the files were locked inside his Apple account, to which she did not have access, and he had not left a will.

It cost his widow, of Chiswick, West London, thousands of dollars in legal fees, and she only met with success after her attorneys agreed to work pro bono, she told the Times.

Apple said it needed a court order to legally release the access information if the person who died did not specify his or her wishes, The Times said.

But Thompson, 44, found Apple's overall attitude "harsh and unhelpful," the Times reported.

Laws differ between countries, but this was not the first time Apple had denied a deceased spouse's account access to a widow. In 2016, 72-year-old Peggy Bush was forced to obtain a court order to get her husband's iPad password -- just so she could play cards.

Bush had all the items Apple requested -- a will leaving everything to her, a notarized death certificate and serial numbers for his devices. Nonetheless, her daughter, Donna Bush, got the runaround for two months, they told CBC News.

"I finally got someone who said, 'You need a court order,' " Donna Bush told CBC News. "I was just completely flummoxed. What do you mean a court order? I said that was ridiculous, because we've been able to transfer the title of the house, we've been able to transfer the car, all these things, just using a notarized death certificate and the will."

Apple was not available for comment on Sunday.

Struggles such as this are destined to burgeon as people with large online presences pass away.

"More and more people are transferring their lives online, and it's going to become a greater and greater proportion of one's estate," Toronto estate lawyer Daniel Nelson told CBC News. "When it's digital property it gets murky. While that photograph on Google cloud or on Facebook belongs to you, the access belongs to the service provider."

In the United States, most of the same constraints apply.

"Most of your online accounts will not pass through your will or other estate planning device because they are not your property," says the do-it-yourself legal website Nolo.com. "Social network accounts, domain name registrations, email accounts, and most other types of online accounts are 'yours' by license only. When you die, the contract is over and the business that administers the account controls what happens to it."

For photos, videos and the like, as long as you own those files "you can use your will or living trust to leave these items to your friends or love ones," Nolo.com says. "Just describe them well ('all of my photographs of the Grand Canyon stored in my Snapfish account') and make sure that your executor has the information he or she needs to access the account and download the files."

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