A trusted person who reads along

During life you can let a trusted person read along. That person sees what you switch on, not the whole archive merely because the name stands somewhere. Sharing is a switch. You switch it on for this file, and you can switch it off again. A trusted person who reads along helps when you yourself cannot put things in order for a while: finding the family doctor, pointing out the policy, going through the funeral wish. The role is help during life. It is not an authorisation to inherit and not an appointment as executor. Those appointments, if you want them, belong in a deed, not in a tick in the software.

After death that access does not automatically become access to the whole estate. The life file becomes a file of the estate inventory, with heirs, debts and amounts. What someone was allowed to see during life is not the measure of what is visible afterwards. You switch sharing off and, if it has to be, on again per layer. Timeline, estate inventory, amounts and letters stand apart from one another. A trusted person who is not an heir does not get the amounts through the old tick. Invite that person again only if there is a reason, and then only for the layer you switch on deliberately.

The file records the name and the telephone number of the trusted person. More is not needed for the role during life. Add what that person may do: read along, use the call list, know where papers can be found. Do not add that that person settles the estate, unless a will really makes that person executor. Do not mix those roles up in the name of a field. A field that is called trusted person keeps that name after death. The executor, if there is one, gets a place of their own in the file at the moment that role exists, not earlier.

Change the switch deliberately. Before an admission you can switch sharing on. Afterwards you switch it off again once the reason has passed. After the death you switch it off on the day the file becomes an estate, and afterwards you look per person at what the portal may show. A staff member of the office sees the workspace. That is a different entrance from the trusted person. Do not let those entrances run into each other because it seems handy on a busy day. Handy is how an amount ends up on the wrong screen. Off, and then on in a targeted way, is the safer order.

A trusted person reads during life what you switch on, and nothing more. After death that access does not automatically become the whole estate. You switch sharing off and on again, per layer. Timeline, estate inventory, amounts and letters stay separate. This piece does not make the trusted person an executor or an heir. This is not legal advice and not tax advice. Whether someone is authorised to act after the death stands in a deed or in the law, not in a switch that was on during life. The notary or an adviser reads that authority, not this screen.