Our promise
What you can hold us to.
You are trusting SuddenGone with something that has to work on a day you will not be here to check. These are the commitments we make, in plain words. They are also written into our terms.
The hand-off never depends on a payment.
Cards are closed when someone dies. A service that needs the next payment to deliver would fail at the exact moment it is needed.
So if your plan lapses, for any reason, your sealed entries stay stored and the release process still runs in full: report, review, waiting period, hand-off. There is no fee to release an envelope and no fee to open one.
A released envelope stays open for at least a year.
Settling an estate takes months. Once an envelope is released, each person you named can open it, read it and print it for at least a year after release, at no charge.
Going quiet never releases anything.
Missed check-ins only ask your people to look in on you. A long hospital stay, time in custody, months of travel or an unread inbox is never treated as a death, and any person you named can tell us you are alive but out of reach.
Release needs a report from someone you chose or a verified firm, with a death certificate every time, then a review, then a waiting period that you or any of your people can stop with one tap.
Your family will never need anything of yours.
If it happens without warning, they will not have your phone, your email or your recovery code. The hand-off is built so they do not need them. Each person opens their envelope with their own email address and their own key: the card you sent them, or the answer to a question you set for them.
A family member who has lost their link, or only suspects an envelope exists, can start from the "Someone has died" page with nothing but their own email address.
We keep to the order you set.
If you ask one person to go first and tidy up private things, their envelope opens first and the others wait: until that person says they have finished, or until the wait you chose runs out, whichever comes first. Nobody is left locked out.
An entry you mark never to be handed over is deleted at release, unread. And if you are alive but unable to act, the one person you chose is shown only the sections you picked for that case, after a doctor's letter, a review and a waiting period.
We cannot read a word of it, and neither can our staff.
Everything you write, from a password to your Social Security number, is sealed in your browser before it is stored. We hold it without any way to open it, and no staff tool can either.
We will never email or call to ask for your SuddenGone password, your recovery code or the code on a card.
When a release happens, billing stops.
We cancel the subscription ourselves when an envelope is released, so an estate is not charged again.
Signed and sealed, SuddenGone.
If we ever close
The wind-down plan, decided in advance.
Small companies close sometimes. A service like this one should say what happens then, before you rely on it.
Ninety days of notice
If SuddenGone ever has to close, every member and every named person is told by email at least 90 days ahead.
A full export for every member
You can download everything you wrote at any time as one readable file, and print a binder to put with your papers. During a wind-down we remind you to do it.
Pending releases come first
Any release already under way is finished before anything is switched off. No family is left halfway.
No new charges
Billing stops on the day a closure is announced. The service keeps running for the notice period without it.
One more safeguard costs nothing: print your binder once a year and keep it with your papers. Leave the secrets out, or lock the pages away if you include them. Then your family has the list even if the internet does not cooperate.
Plain limits
What SuddenGone is not.
- Not a will in itself
- An entry in your envelope is not a will and does not decide who inherits. It tells your family what exists and where the real documents are. A will you make here becomes one only when you print it and sign it the way your state or country requires.
- Not a law firm
- We do not give legal, tax or financial advice. The papers you can make here are forms you complete yourself, and we do not check them or judge whether they are valid where you live. The guide only checks that your family can find them and that you have marked them signed.
- Not a remote control
- We cannot reach into a phone, a computer or an online account and delete anything. Private clean-up is done by a person you trust, who goes first with your list.
- Not a place for originals
- A copy of a document stored here helps your family find and recognize the original. Courts and banks usually need the signed original itself.
- Not permission
- A password in your envelope lets your family reach an account. It does not give them the legal right to it. Banks, brokers and insurers release money to a named beneficiary or to the executor, with a death certificate, through their own process.