[mikeyouse]

This is a surprisingly strong response.. I mean no disrespect to lawyers but they're expensive and often unnecessary for simple matters. If for whatever reason Google gives you the run around, by all means, get a lawyer involved -- it's not like there's a deadline to retrieve your data.

> If you think that banks gleefully return money to a decedent's family after death you haven't dealt with this issue much.

I actually just went through this and to be honest, it was completely painless. Maybe it was a good bank compared to most, and it was definitely a small-balance account, but a single form verifying next-of-kin faxed with a copy of the death certificate was enough to get access to the account.