One of the "knock it out of the park" features of icloud is that it lets you trivially share photostreams (It's the one service that I've found close to flawless) - so all those shared pictures are still available to the family who you shared them with should you pass away.
I certainly don't know if Apple should, without a court order, share any of my data that I haven't explicitly shared with next of kin if I passed away.
I'm wondering though - what happens if I stop paying my $2.99/month for 200 GB - will any of my existing photos be wiped out of shared photostreams?
The problem with requiring explicit sharing is that a lot of people don'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't want real-world assets to automatically get destroyed because you failed to write a will, even though there may be some things in there you didn't want to pass down. The "failsafe" mechanism there is, a court figures it out. So that's apparently what Apple is doing.
But keep in mind this is not just about next-of-kin. It's also about the ability for you to recover your life if you forget your password. That is why Apple will always have a "backdoor" into iCloud.
I certainly don't know if Apple should, without a court order, share any of my data that I haven't explicitly shared with next of kin if I passed away.
I'm wondering though - what happens if I stop paying my $2.99/month for 200 GB - will any of my existing photos be wiped out of shared photostreams?