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Apple? Buy Order!

including wills and probate
Clitheroekid
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Apple? Buy Order!

#397207

Postby Clitheroekid » March 19th, 2021, 7:10 pm

I recently came across an interesting case that potentially affects millions of people.

It was a claim brought by a woman called Rachel Thompson. Her husband, Matthew, died in 2015 without leaving a will. Their daughter Matilda was then aged 6.

Matthew was a keen photographer, and had over 4,500 family photos and 900 videos on his iPhone. They were stored on his iCloud account.

Although Rachel was his sole heir and administrator of his estate, Apple refused to give Rachel access to Matthew’s iCloud account. The Grant of Letters of Administration was deemed insufficient, and Apple insisted upon a specific court order.

At the hearing at Central London County Court HHJ Luba granted the order, but said that there should be a clear procedure for dealing with such matters, which are likely to come before the court more often.

Although Rachel's claim was successful, I'd imagine it cost her several thousand pounds to obtain it.

I must admit this is a situation I've never come across or even really considered, and I'm not sure what could have been done to avoid it. However, I'm going to consider advising people to put an additional clause in their Will specifically authorising the executors to provide authority to the holders of digital assets to release them. The exact wording may prove something of a challenge!

However, if it works it's another good reason to make a Will, as without such an authority the members of your family who inherit your estate will find themselves in the same position as Rachel.

Lootman
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397210

Postby Lootman » March 19th, 2021, 7:23 pm

Without detracting in any way from your idea of a clause in Wills dealing with this, another simple idea is to ensure that your executor, beneficiary and/or next of kin has access to the password or PIN to access such data. Whereupon the entire dispute is simply bypassed.

As peoples' lives become increasingly online and digital, the ability to transfer control of digital assets by simply sharing access to accounts seems like a logical and prudent precaution.

Those close to the deceased are theoretically not supposed to meddle with the deceased's financial assets post-mortem (unless they are the executor). But digital assets like this seem to me to be more like a physical photo album, which is simply requisitioned by the family after the death of its owner.

Steveam
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397216

Postby Steveam » March 19th, 2021, 7:56 pm

I’ve done two things:

- all my passwords are in a password manager (LastPass) and this has a facility to grant a trusted party DELAYED access. It quite neat: the trusted party requests access to your vault and is granted such access n days later if you (having been contacted) do not countermand the grant of access
- I’ve set my email account (gmail) so that if not accessed for 30 days it grants access to a trusted party

Best wishes,

Steve

Mike4
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397219

Postby Mike4 » March 19th, 2021, 8:20 pm

Lootman wrote:Without detracting in any way from your idea of a clause in Wills dealing with this, another simple idea is to ensure that your executor, beneficiary and/or next of kin has access to the password or PIN to access such data. Whereupon the entire dispute is simply bypassed.


Couldn't agree more.

When I get a round tuit I'm gonna staple my appleID and password on a Post-It note to my will.

PinkDalek
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397220

Postby PinkDalek » March 19th, 2021, 8:28 pm

Mike4 wrote:When I get a round tuit I'm gonna staple my appleID and password on a Post-It note to my will.


If serious nice idea but be careful and hopefully CK can confirm or otherwise. As I understand it ***, if there are staple holes in a Will but nothing attached, then that might invalidate the Will. That could happen when the grateful recipient of the Post-It note takes it off to go and attempt to access Apple products.

*** I haven’t researched further. A solicitor told me that many years ago, if my memory serves me correctly.

Mike4
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397229

Postby Mike4 » March 19th, 2021, 9:01 pm

PinkDalek wrote:
Mike4 wrote:When I get a round tuit I'm gonna staple my appleID and password on a Post-It note to my will.


If serious nice idea but be careful and hopefully CK can confirm or otherwise. As I understand it ***, if there are staple holes in a Will but nothing attached, then that might invalidate the Will. That could happen when the grateful recipient of the Post-It note takes it off to go and attempt to access Apple products.

*** I haven’t researched further. A solicitor told me that many years ago, if my memory serves me correctly.


Sellotape??

Midsmartin
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397245

Postby Midsmartin » March 19th, 2021, 10:16 pm

I can't across a related problem with gaining access to an iPad. One you put in the wrong pin too many times, because it's owner has died, they lock up permanently and completely.

AF62
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397381

Postby AF62 » March 20th, 2021, 12:09 pm

Clitheroekid wrote:I must admit this is a situation I've never come across or even really considered, and I'm not sure what could have been done to avoid it. However, I'm going to consider advising people to put an additional clause in their Will specifically authorising the executors to provide authority to the holders of digital assets to release them. The exact wording may prove something of a challenge!


Although that may achieve the desired result in the end, I suspect that there might still be costs involved in persuading Apple to release the data given the 'No survivorship' clause for iCloud. Perhaps as a 'belt and braces' approach it would be wise to advise people to familiarise themselves with the photo and document sharing tools built into iCloud and to use them to avoid the problem in the first place.

Even sharing your Apple password in your will might not be enough if you have enabled 2FA and the relatives don't have access to the second method of authentication.

Google takes a slightly different approach to Apple, in that it offers an 'inactivity manager' (https://myaccount.google.com/inactive) which you can set to do one of three things if you don't use your account for a period of time - notify someone you are dead, notify someone you are dead and provide access to your data, or delete the account.

Given that Google envisages circumstances when someone might not want surviving relatives to be able to access their data (for whatever reasons) and that is just be deleted, given that the court decided on behalf of Matthew Thompson that he would want his wife to access his personal iCloud account and Matthew didn't actually get to express a view, perhaps there will be some who would want a clause in their will specifically denying the executors or surviving relatives any authority to seek the release of the data from the holders of digital assets.

Lootman
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397416

Postby Lootman » March 20th, 2021, 2:14 pm

AF62 wrote:Even sharing your Apple password in your will might not be enough if you have enabled 2FA and the relatives don't have access to the second method of authentication.

I had thought of that, and so my phone would normally be available to my next of kin.

It also shows the risk with blindly notifying third parties about a death though. If your phone company is notified and then they suspend service, then with 2FA your phone could no longer be used to access your accounts.

As I have said before in similar discussions, one needs to be quite shrewd about whom you notify about a death, and the timing of that, for fear of losing access to and usage of important accounts, whether digital or financial. So when in doubt, don't.

chas49
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Re: Apple? Buy Order!

#397473

Postby chas49 » March 20th, 2021, 5:19 pm

Clitheroekid wrote:I recently came across an interesting case that potentially affects millions of people..


Moderator Message:
With the greatest respect to CK as the OP of this topic, I didn't really know what this was going to be about until I actually read the post. The advantage of a good subject line is that it will attract readers who are actually interested in the topic rather than just the curious.

If CK wishes to change the subject title, he can PM me a new title and I'll fix it.


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