Every question, answered honestly.

No. Secure Estate Vault is a secure personal information organizer, not a will, trust, power of attorney, or any legally binding document. It does not distribute your assets, name beneficiaries, or carry any legal weight. It does not replace professional legal advice or estate planning documents. We strongly recommend having a valid will and complete estate plan prepared by a licensed estate attorney. Secure Estate Vault is the practical companion to your will, not a substitute for one.

Secure Estate Vault organizes and securely encrypts your account credentials, passwords, important contacts, financial account details, document locations, and personal wishes, all in one place. When you pass, your trusted person opens the vault using your master password and has an organized, complete picture of your digital life. Your will handles the legal distribution of assets. Secure Estate Vault handles everything else: the "how" to your will's "who."

Indirectly, yes, and significantly. Probate courts require a full accounting of assets. Attorneys charge by the hour to help families compile this information when it doesn't exist. A clear, organized, timestamped record of every account and asset can reduce the time and cost of probate considerably. It does not replace the legal probate process, but it can make it dramatically less painful and expensive.

Absolutely, and we'd strongly encourage it. A licensed estate attorney prepares the legally binding documents your family needs: your will, any trusts, power of attorney, healthcare directives. These are not things Secure Estate Vault can provide. Think of Secure Estate Vault as the practical organizational tool your attorney can't write for you, used alongside the legal documents they can.

Nobody but you. All encryption happens entirely inside your browser. Nothing is ever transmitted to any server. We have no database of user information, no access to vault contents, and no ability to see your passwords or personal details. The encrypted file is mathematically meaningless without your master password, even to us.

AES-256-GCM with PBKDF2 key derivation at 310,000 iterations, the gold standard encryption used by banks, governments, and military agencies worldwide. AES-256 is currently considered computationally unbreakable against standard guessing hardware. The 310,000 PBKDF2 iterations make brute-force password guessing incredibly slow even with specialized gear.

They'll see complete gibberish: random characters that are mathematically meaningless without the master password. Even if someone obtains the encrypted file, they cannot access its contents without the password. This is precisely what encryption is designed for.

No. Your master password is never stored, transmitted, logged, or recorded anywhere, including by us. It exists only in your browser's memory during the active session and is cleared immediately after you seal the vault. We have absolutely no record of your password and no way to retrieve it.

Shorter passwords, even complex ones, can be cracked through brute force with modern hardware. A 16-character minimum password that includes uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters creates a number of possible combinations so large it is effectively uncrackable with any foreseeable technology. We enforce this because the security of your vault is only as strong as your password, and we refuse to let you use a weak one.

There is no recovery option, and this is intentional. The same feature that makes Secure Estate Vault genuinely secure is the same feature that means we cannot recover a lost password. Not even us. The app clearly warns you before sealing, requires you to confirm you have written your password down, and provides guidance on where to store it safely. Store your password in a sealed envelope with your attorney, in a safety deposit box, or with a trusted person. This is not a design oversight. It is a fundamental security feature.

You receive a zip file containing five HTML files: (1) a Read Me First guide for your family, (2) the Secure Estate Vault encrypted app, (3) a Personal Information Worksheet, (4) a Setup & Storage Security Protocol, and (5) the product Terms, License & Disclaimer. All five files open in any standard web browser: Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox. No software to install. No account to create.

Secure Estate Vault files work forever as plain HTML files in any browser, completely offline. They have zero dependency on our servers, our website, our continued operation, or any internet connection. If we closed tomorrow, every existing vault would continue to work exactly as designed, indefinitely. This was a deliberate design decision.

Only to download the files initially. After that, everything works 100% offline. The encryption, the vault, the Read Me First guide: all of it runs locally in your browser with no internet connection required. This also means your data never travels over the internet at any point.

Yes, that is specifically what we designed for. The Read Me First guide holds the reader's hand through every single step, assumes absolutely no technical knowledge, and uses calm, compassionate, plain language. It covers who to call, what to do first, how to open the vault, and how to work through accounts. If they can open a web browser and type, they can use it.

We recommend reviewing and updating your vault at least once a year, or whenever you make a significant change like opening a new account, changing a password, or updating important contacts. Re-sealing the vault takes only a few minutes. Think of it like updating your will: an annual review keeps it current.

We recommend storing on a USB drive in at least two separate secure locations: a safety deposit box, a fireproof home safe, or with your estate attorney. The encrypted file can also be stored in cloud storage or emailed to yourself. It is meaningless without the password, so its location is less critical than the password's location. Never store the password and the encrypted file in the same place.

No. Secure Estate Vault is a one-time purchase of $37. There is no subscription, no renewal, no ongoing fee of any kind. You own the files permanently. Future updates are included free of charge.

Due to the digital nature of this product, all sales are final once the file has been downloaded. If you experience a technical issue preventing you from accessing your files, contact us at hello@securestatevault.com within 7 days and we will make it right. We do not issue refunds for change of mind or after the download has been accessed.

All payments are processed securely by Stripe, one of the world's most trusted payment processors. We never see or store your credit card information. Your payment details go directly to Stripe and are never accessible to us.

The average American carries approximately 12 active subscriptions costing $219 per month. Probate typically takes 6 to 18 months. That means an estate could absorb between $1,314 and $3,942 in subscription charges for services nobody is using, simply because the family had no record of what accounts existed or how to cancel them.

No. There is no database that subscription companies check when someone passes. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, gym memberships, cloud storage, news apps: they all keep billing automatically until someone actively contacts each company individually, provides a death certificate, and requests cancellation. This process can take weeks per service and is impossible if the family does not know the account exists.

Research consistently shows between 8 and 15 active subscriptions per household. The most common include streaming video (the average household subscribes to 4.5 platforms at approximately $69/month), cloud storage, password managers, fitness apps, food delivery memberships, music streaming, news subscriptions, and software. Surveys show that 70% of people pay for at least one subscription they rarely or never use, making a documented list even more valuable to a family settling an estate.

Yes, and it is serious. Active subscriptions tied to a deceased person's email address, credit card, and personal accounts keep that digital footprint alive and vulnerable. Fraudsters actively target recently deceased individuals' accounts. Every active account that the family does not know about is a potential identity theft risk for as long as it remains open. Secure Estate Vault's subscription section ensures your family can close every account promptly.

The Personal Information Worksheet includes a dedicated subscriptions section where you list every recurring service: the company name, the email address used to sign in, and the approximate monthly cost. When your family opens the vault, they have a complete list on day one. Combined with the account credentials in the encrypted vault, they can cancel every subscription immediately, potentially saving thousands of dollars from the estate.