What belongs in a life file

A life file is for someone who is still alive. Documents belong in it, contacts, possessions, wishes and the name of a trusted person. Documents are the papers someone else must be able to find later: deeds, policies, an overview from the bank, not the passwords that go with them. Contacts are the people who must be called, with a telephone number that is right. Possessions are the home, the accounts, the insurance and the debts, at the level of an overview. Wishes are about care and the funeral. The trusted person is the one who may read along for as long as you switch that on. On the first day the file does not have to be more than that.

The life file is not a will. A will is a last will (uiterste wil), drawn up as the law requires, usually with the notary. A note in Ervazo, however careful, is not that deed. Anyone who writes in the file that a child must have the house records a wish, not an appointment as heir (erfstelling). The notary draws up the deed, or establishes that there is already a deed. In the file you note where that deed is and at which office, if you know. If that place is missing, that is a task, not a reason to treat the wish as a will.

It is also no replacement for the notary. The notary passes deeds, issues a certificate of inheritance (verklaring van erfrecht) and assesses questions about acceptance, a legacy (legaat) and the forced share (legitieme portie). Ervazo keeps what you enter and orders it. It does not decide whether a text is legally valid. Use the file to prepare the appointment with the notary: which papers there are, who the children are, whether there is an earlier deed. Do not take the software along as the answer to a question only the notary can answer. An empty question in the file is then more honest than a clause written by yourself.

What you fill in may be incomplete. An unknown bank is an open answer, not an invented account. A wish you do not yet have, you leave empty. The template of a life file asks about the person, care, the funeral, money and digital matters, and empty answers may come later. Once a year you check whether the names and the papers are still right. A trusted person who has moved, a policy that has stopped, a family doctor who stops: you change that in the file, not in a loose letter no one finds again. The file is usable when it is up to date, not when it is thick.

A life file contains documents, contacts, possessions, wishes and a trusted person. It is not a will and it does not replace the notary. What you put in it is an ordering for yourself and for the person who may read along. Whether a wish must later go into a deed, and whether the overview is complete enough for an estate inventory, remains a question outside the software. This is not legal advice and not tax advice. For the deed you go to the notary. For the tax, if that comes up later, you go to the Belastingdienst or to an adviser, not to this file alone.