They do require a court order, reportedly.<p>The problem with requiring explicit sharing is that a lot of people don&#x27;t realize they need to do it to properly navigate these future events. Just look at how many people fail to write wills. You wouldn&#x27;t want real-world assets to automatically get <i>destroyed</i> because you failed to write a will, even though there may be some things in there you didn&#x27;t want to pass down. The &quot;failsafe&quot; mechanism there is, a court figures it out. So that&#x27;s apparently what Apple is doing.<p>But keep in mind this is not just about next-of-kin. It&#x27;s also about the ability for <i>you</i> to recover your life if you forget your password. That is why Apple will always have a &quot;backdoor&quot; into iCloud.