My wife had her iPhone 8 stolen last week. Within 20 minutes of it being stolen we'd received an email saying that the account password had been changed and Find my Phone had been disabled.

She didn't have a pass code on it. I don't have a pass code on mine either. This is handy for me at work as others can take my calls if I happen to be on another call.

My brother died last year and it was really handy that he didn't have a pass code on his as it was the only way to access his gmail account to which no one else had the password to. He also had lots of contacts that were only stored on his phone.

So:

1. Would the thief have been hindered by there being a pass code set on the phone? They managed to reset the account password quite easily.
2. If a pass code/touch ID was set how do you deal with the owner passing away? I'm assuming it would be almost impossible to get Apple to unlock it.

Any advice appreciated