Does anyone know of any way to access a deceased person's e-mail account?

I have written both Yahoo! and Google, and Google at least seems to have some backdoor password thing in case you totally forget everything. Of course it requires information I don’t have (my grandfather’s middle name) but I’m working on that.

Is there anything else I ened to/must do? Will Yahoo! even give me access, considering I am only the daughter? I mean, my dad can prove he’s the husband but I am not entirely positive my dad knows how to turn the computer on, let alone get onto e-mail and somehow access it.

Eventually I want to just get in there and maintain both e-mail addys for my dad. Thoughts?

Google have a process - more info here…

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=14300

Oh, thank you! I was searching through their help database but when I put the terms into google I just got a lot of gobbledygook.

However, note item 5 - you need to prove that you are the lawful representative. Wouldn’t that be your dad?

Generally, you just have to contact the ISP with proof that you are the legal executor of the estate of the deceased person.

Depending on where and a few other things, her dad can give her the legal right and can limit it however he wants – probably. When my BiL died, his parents made my wife and I executors of the estate and since he had never married that gave us some pretty good authority in PA. We got access to his e-mail accounts through the courts on the basis that estate assets could be reflected in current or past e-mails.