Apple to Widow: Want Your Husband's Password? Get a Court Order

A Canadian widow is locked in a battle with Apple over her dead husband's account, which Cupertino says will require a court order to access.

"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. It's nonsense," 72-year-old Peggy Bush from Victoria, B.C. told CBC's Go Public. 

According to the report, Bush lost her husband David to lung cancer this August. The couple owned an Apple computer and an iPad, which she used to play games. The trouble started when her iPad card game app stopped working.

The family tried to re-install the app, but realized it couldn't be done without the password. So, Bush's daughter called Apple to ask for it.

"The person on the phone said, 'Sure, no problem. We just need the will and the death certificate and to talk to Mom,'" daughter Donna Bush told Go Public. But when she called back, Apple customer service wasn't so accommodating.

For two months they tried and failed to retrieve the password, even after providing Apple with the serial numbers for the items, David's will that left everything to his wife, and a notarized death certificate. But Apple then requested a court order.

That's when Bush and her daughter gave up trying to deal with Apple directly and went public with their story. After Go Public contacted Apple, the tech giant apologized to the Bush family and offered to help solve the problem without a court order. As of Monday, when Go Public published the story, Bush still had not yet retrieved the password, however.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On its website, the company's terms say that Apple users "agree that your Account is non-transferable and that any rights to your Apple ID or Content within your Account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate your Account may be terminated and all Content within your Account deleted."

This is not a new phenomenon. Back in 2004, for example, the family of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq battled with Yahoo for access to his email account. Justin Ellsworth's family went to court over the matter, and was granted access to his account in April 2005.

Social networks have also been forced to come up with policies regarding deceased members. In 2009, Facebook allowed people to turn the profiles of deceased users into memorial pages, and last year, it let users select a legacy contact, who will have access to their account if they die.