This morbid chain of thought started when I came across this Teller Report post. An excerpt:

The Münster district court has ordered Apple to grant the heirs of a deceased iCloud user access to its data. The relatives hope for information about the circumstances of death.

And:

According to the Bielefeld law firm Brandi, who represented the heirs in court, the father died during a trip abroad. Apple has rejected the desire of relatives to gain access to the data stored in the iCloud out of court.

The company did not want to comment on the case. Experts pointed out, however, that the iPhone group in the past in similar cases, the heirs have made possible access to iCloud data of the deceased even without trial. The submission of a certificate of inheritance was sufficient. In other cases, it needed a court order.

I suspect some of the details have been lost in translation. So I did a bit of digging.

From the official Apple iCloud terms of service page:

No Right of Survivorship

Unless otherwise required by law, You 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.

So there it is. Pretty clear. If you die, Apple’s policy is to delete your account. Seems to me, there should be a way to assign an heir, perhaps transfer all the files to the heir’s account. They could even limit heirs to family members in a family plan.

Not crazy about a policy that forces a grieving family to have to go to court to access their loved ones photos, etc.