So they should just give up?

There's nothing wrong with planning for the future. Some of the big issues we have today are companies prioritizing short term profits at the sacrifice of long term prospects. CEOs love to come to a company, cancel a bunch of stuff that would take a long time to come to fruition in the name of saving money, then jump ship with their contractual bonus before the negative waves hit.

It's possible they wiped it and restored from a recent icloud backup. They could have had the account ordered unlocked by the court, or she could have had a sticky note with her icloud name and password somewhere that they found.

There isn't enough info to know.

well, unless you want the larger table which is more than $10k.

OP is 18, if the ex is also 18, she can't do much. Threaten to kick him out of the house maybe, but a loving parent might not be willing to kick their teenage child out over something like this.

It's shitty, but it's a tough decision for a parent to have to make. He really should give the necklace back, but unfortunately sometimes the bad guy wins in real life.

For those that want to know what the joke was (thanks unddit):

He jumped up, "Dad! It's not what it looks like!"

"Don't worry, son." I replied. "I've tried too."

He said, "Really?"

I said, "Yeah. But you woke up before I had the chance."