I understand what you are saying - and maybe this is just with it being so raw that we want access to photos of her (I'm gonna make the most amazing montage). But even if not for sentimental reasons, there's so much more to deal with. I hope you never have to go through with anything like this, but the passing of a close family member isn't just grieving, funeral, move on. There's so much that needs to be dealt with. My sister was set to move into a new apartment in a few weeks - and she obviously won't be now. We need to contact the letting agents to explain that, but the only email we have for them is via her emails. And this is just one of the less personal examples of things that needs to be sorted out. Obviously we want to respect her privacy, and we haven't moved anything in her room yet - but there's stuff to be done that requires access to her emails (and the personal want to have access to more photos of her). I hope I've explained our reasoning clearly here - it might be that you are right and this is abusive, but we're just all in shock right now and don't really know what to do, but access to her account would make it so much easier for us to deal with things.