Okay. I just had to recover my father's iPad account; he's alive but lets just say aggravating at times getting him to do what he is told to do.
Since he bricked his iPad I had to submit a recovery through iCloud and that invokes a twenty four hour delay before it sends recovery information to his listed authentication device; as in his telephone.
So that comes in which directs you to apple.com/recover or such and when you put the id in you have the option to get a 2FA code back to the phone which we did. I then simply put my phone number into the account so all future recoveries would be simpler.
Apple will allow for more than one authentication method, use it for ANY gift you give to an elderly parent or such. Frankly the best option you have is to get yourself on their email account recovery page as well.
Its just common sense in this era of identity theft that you do your due diligence so you can protect those you care for.
If your iPad is asking for a passcode and you don't know it you are lost unless it was backed up which brings up the second point.
When giving gifts like these out make sure to help the recipient learn how to back it up to a computer or have them let you back it up to yours when they visit.