How is your family guided through your digital assets and your non-digital assets?
The will is somewhere. The password manager is locked. The Apple ID needs a thirteen-character code your spouse has never heard of. When the worst happens, your family needs guidance, not frustration.
I · The morning after
Your daughter is sitting at your kitchen table at six in the morning. Your laptop is open in front of her. She doesn't know your password. She doesn't know which of your bank accounts had the cards on it. She doesn't know whether the streaming subscriptions billing your card last month were ones you actually used.
Your will is wherever you put it. It's legal-speak… who is the contact that makes sense of this?
This week, she will spend forty hours trying to inventory your digital and non-digital assets. Next month, sixty more. Eight months from now, she will still be calling Apple about your photos.
II · Four specific pain points
These aren't edge cases. They're the documented default. Each scenario below is taken from a public forum thread, a Reddit post, or a survivor's account.
Apple iCloud
Without the Legacy Contact code — a 13-character string Apple generates and you must explicitly save somewhere — even a death certificate and court order won't get your family in. Apple has been explicit: no code, no access.
“Even with the death certificate and a court order, Apple wouldn't give us access to my mother's iCloud without the Legacy Contact code. We lost twenty years of photos.”
2FA & password manager
Even if your spouse has your master password, every important account also requires a one-time code from your phone — which may be locked, lost, or wiped. 1Password's community has been asking for an Emergency Access feature for five years. No movement.
“He had every password in 1Password. We had the master password. We still couldn't get into his bank because of 2FA on his phone, which we couldn't unlock.”
Subscriptions
The average estate has seventeen recurring charges still drawing from the deceased's bank account a year after death. Each one requires a separate call, a separate notarized letter, sometimes a separate court order. Streaming, gym, software, magazines.
“Six months in we found three subscriptions still billing. Disney+, a meal kit, and something called "Audible Plus" we had to call three times to cancel.”
Your will exists
The will is signed and notarized — but where is it? The original in one drawer, the trust with the lawyer, the healthcare directive and the account list somewhere else. Your family spends the worst week of their life hunting for paperwork, never certain they have everything. CairnVault keeps the will and every document around it in one place, with a note on where each original lives.
“I didn't know what I was in for.”
III · The typical experience
Average time families spend coordinating an estate.
Median time from death to "we finally got into everything," based on Reddit and forum survivor accounts.
Time the average family spends just locating the will, the trust, and the full account list.
How long probate can stay open when the documents are scattered or one cannot be found.
“When my dad died, we couldn't get into anything — his email, his phone, his bank. Eight months later we were still calling people. Don't do that to your family.”
r/LifeProTips · “Let your spouse know your passwords” · top reply · May 2024
IV · The default outcome
…draft the documents. They do not maintain a workflow of which accounts exist, which beneficiaries are on file, which subscriptions auto-renew, or how to reach the Apple Legacy Contact. Their job ends at signed-and-notarized. The next 40-100 hours are on your family.
…(1Password, Bitwarden, Apple Keychain) hold credentials but were designed for one user, one session. Emergency Access exists in some products in theory; in practice it expires, breaks on 2FA, or has never been set up.
…(Trust & Will, LegalZoom) sell document drafting. They do not compile a workflow your daughter can act on at six in the morning across all your assets (Digital & Non-Digital).
The gap is operational. Three companies that almost cover it leave a hole large enough that 70% of households fall through. CairnVault is the layer that sits in that gap.
V · How CairnVault works
Three movements, end to end. Nothing leaves your device unencrypted, ever.
A password we cannot reset.
Choose a master password, save a Secret Key as your second factor — printable as an Emergency Kit you tuck beside your passport. Your vault key is derived from both, with post-quantum-hardened cryptography. We never see it.
Digital and non-digital.
What your family will need to know: bank accounts, retirement, subscriptions, Apple Legacy, 2FA backup codes, pet care, the keepsake your sister should have, your will, trust, healthcare directive, and power of attorney. You can come back and update this anytime.
A workflow your daughter can read at 6am.
Your contacts hold half your vault key; CairnVault holds the other — neither alone can open it. When you pass, your survivors give CairnVault a death certificate. Once verified, the halves merge on their own device to unlock your vault — never our servers — and CairnVault guides them through your assets.
VI · How we build this
Zero-knowledge
Vault key derived on your device from your password and Secret Key. We never see your vault contents. A subpoena tomorrow gets us nothing to hand over but a blob of garbly-goop a quantum computer couldn't crack.
Post-quantum
NIST FIPS 203, ratified August 2024 and governed by the Linux Foundation's Post-Quantum Cryptography Alliance. Designed to resist a future quantum-capable adversary who is storing encrypted shares today.
Legal posture
We store your encrypted documents and information, allow your designees to decrypt them when you pass, and guide them through each piece. We never interpret their legal meaning/purpose.
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VII · Pricing
A benefit that greatly outweighs the cost.
Foundation