Maureen Henry’s son Dovi died in 2014. She wanted to know what happened to her son and believed that if she could access his social media accounts she might be able to understand what happened. In 2017 she obtained a court order in Canada granting her access to various accounts but in 2019 she was still waiting for some of the social media account holders to comply with the court order.
The problem is that tech giants like Google and Facebook are global corporations and it is not clear which laws and rules take priority in a particular situation.
In Canada no province or territory has enacted executor access legislation yet. In the US most states have enacted digital access laws. Facebook does offer something called Legacy Contact and Google has Inactive Account Manager but these programs need to be initiated by the account holder prior to their death.
Deborah A. Todd
