If the family gets all of his property including postal mail upon death, they should also get his email.
End of controversy.
BUMP
If the family gets all of his property including postal mail upon death, they should also get his email.
Those responsible for returning a deceased serviceman's possessions to the next of kin have been known to "censor" or "lose" potentially embarassing items. For instance, if it's known that "Joe" was married, it's probably not wise to send along letters from a girlfriend his wife knows nothing about.
How about his email outbox? I'm assuming that once his account is opened up, the family will read that, too. The snail mail equivalent would be recalling all the paper letters he sent while on deployment and giving those to his family, too. There's no precedent that I know for that particular action, but that's exactly what opening his email box would do.
It's a bit of a Pandora's box, I think. The family may read things they wished they had never seen. If the Marine had wanted them to read his email in the event of his death, he would have made provisions for it before deployment.
Let the man rest in peace.