That sounds very unlikely. This isn't a new problem, and there are procesing in place which discover any and all financial account belonging to the deceased and transfer ownership to the estate's executor. I don't believe for a second that this woman couldn't get into some financial account belonging to her husband without inside help.
The issue wasn't getting into a financial account per se, rather getting into all the devices the husband controlled. She didn't know the passwords.
In the old days, estate executors would monitor physical mail to make sure they found all bank accounts. With many tech savvy people moving away from physical mail, the only notification about which accounts are out there are arriving by email to an account an executor does not have access to. How to know which accounts need to fall under the estate if you don't know the account exists?
Anyway, I will keep up the search for the video. I tweaked my personal technology plan a bit to deal with some of the issues that video raised. In addition to a physical list of key passwords, 2FA recovery keys, and encryption keys, I also included specific recovery scenarios like:
1) me dead, all laptops / phones / 2-factor fobs destroyed
2) me dead, phone missing, but still have laptop & fobs
3) me dead, laptop missing, but have phone & fobs
4) me dead, fobs missing but have laptop & phone
As a courtesy to clients, I also noted what client assets and data I controlled, where I kept the object, how to decrypt if necessary, and who to contact to arrange hand over.
https://boingboing.net/2016/02/04/how-to-prepare-to-join-the...
Where do you store all of this?
She actually did have an accident that caused memory loss and it was a huge problem for her.
Your memory is important, make sure you have a backup of the crucial bits :)
I watched an hour long video about a youngish technologist who died in auto accident. His wife lost control of their i-devices. Some of his encrypted devices that he maintained for clients were also equally inaccessible. The only way the wife regained control of her own digital and financial life was to tap technologist friends who called in favors with Google / Apple. Even they could not decrypt the miscellaneous client owned devices. Neither could the clients. [Edit: I searched for this video and unfortunately could not locate it.]
I put my parents on 1Password. Begged them actually. I quote "how about we just try it for like a week while I am here? if you don't like it, I won't ask you again." My Dad had a crazy so-called method that was supposedly simple to follow, but every time he tried to explain it to me as executor of his & my mom's estates, it was incomprehensible.
After 1 week, Dad was a convert and Mom had her first reliable access to the joint online bank accounts.
For myself, I have a technical hand over plan for somebody to follow to break the encryption on my devices. I also give an accounting of my data, what is where, both financial and sentimental. Most data can be immediately deleted, but some thing like my photography and music collections may be wanted by somebody in the family. The executor of my estate gets the financial records.