It has, but in this case, the family was (by their own account) not so much unfavorable, as clueless -- they say they inquired about getting the books back into

It has, but in this case, the family was (by their own account) not so much unfavorable, as clueless -- they say they inquired about getting the books back into print, but asked Ford's former agent, who was in the process of ghosting pretty much everybody and never responded. Meanwhile, the former publishers would have loved to get the books back into print, and privately complained bitterly about the supposedly intransigent family that was preventing this, but it's really not clear how seriously they tried to ever get in touch. Crossed wires all around. I think the surest sign of everyone's actual intentions is that when the reporter who was investigating this finally had contact information for everybody, they wound up making a deal to get everything the estate had the rights to back in print. (The exceptions to this are things like Ford's utterly brilliant Star Trek tie-ins -- fanfic written by a master at the height of his form -- to which the family never had the rights. Though ironically, for that very reason, they're among the very few Ford works that are still in print!)