Terms for recipients

1. Who these terms are for

Someone who uses SuddenGone has named you to receive their envelope: a private record of their accounts, sign-ins, documents, contacts and wishes. You do not need an account and you will never be charged. These short terms apply when you accept the invitation, report a passing or open an envelope.

2. What you receive

While the person is alive, you receive nothing from their envelope. You may get an email if they miss their check-ins, asking you to look in on them.

If they are alive but cannot check in, because they are in hospital or care, detained or in custody, traveling or deployed, or having trouble with a phone or email, you can tell us from your private page. Check-in alerts then pause for one, three or six months, and the other people they named are told.

You will also be told if anyone reports that the person has died. If you know they are alive, you can stop that report at once from the link in the email.

After their death has been reported, reviewed and a waiting period has passed, we email you a link. With that link and your key, the envelope opens in your browser. Your key is the card they gave you or, if they set one for you, the answer to a question only you would know. You never need their phone, their email or any code of theirs. The envelope stays available to you for at least one year.

The person may have asked someone to go first. If that is you, your envelope opens before the others and includes a private list of things to deal with. If it is someone else, your envelope opens when they tell us they have finished, or after the wait the person set, whichever comes first.

The person may also have chosen you as their stand-in for a time when they are alive but unable to act. In that case, after you tell us with a doctor's letter, a review and a waiting period, you are shown only the sections they picked for that purpose.

What you see is what they chose to leave you. It may not be complete or up to date, and they may have left other people different things.

3. What you agree to

• To tell the truth. If you report a passing, everything you tell us must be true, and the death certificate you provide must be genuine. Knowingly filing a false report is fraud. We may refuse it, and we may give the details to the authorities and to the person concerned. The same honesty applies when you tell us someone is alive, or stop a report.
• To keep the card safe. The card is half of the key to the envelope. Do not share the code or post a picture of it. If you lose it, tell the person who gave it to you so they can make a new one. If they set a backup question for you, keep the answer to yourself.
• If you go first: to do what the list says, and then say so. Carry out the private clean-up list as it is written, do not copy or share what you are asked to delete, and tell us from your page when you have finished so the others can receive their envelopes. Do not destroy anything you believe a court, a tax authority or the estate will need; if the list asks for that, leave it and tell the executor.
• If you are a stand-in: to act for them, not for yourself. What you are shown is for keeping the person's affairs running while they cannot. Use it only for their benefit and only within what a power of attorney they signed, or the law, allows you to do. Being shown a sign-in is not permission to use an account. Stop when they are able to act again or when they end your access.
• To use what you learn lawfully. The envelope may hold sign-in names, passwords and identity numbers. Having them is not the same as having the legal right to an account. For bank, investment and insurance accounts, do not sign in as the person or move money: claim through each institution's own process, as the named beneficiary or through the executor, with a death certificate. Use other sign-ins, such as email, photos, the phone, bills and subscriptions, to carry out what the person asked, and only where that service allows it. Identity numbers are for the forms that need them and nothing else.
• To keep the secrets secret. Do not forward, post or share passwords and numbers from the envelope beyond the people who need them to settle things. If you print them, destroy the pages when the work is done.
• To respect the wishes in the envelope as far as the law and your own circumstances allow, and to keep private what was meant to be private, including details about other people named in it.
• To be at least 18.

4. What SuddenGone can and cannot do

• We cannot open an envelope for you. It is sealed with your card, or with the answer to your question, and we never have either.
• We cannot replace a lost card. Only the person who made the envelope can, while they are alive. If they set a backup question for you, its answer opens the envelope instead.
• We cannot delete anything from a phone, a computer or an online account. A clean-up list is carried out by the person it was left to.
• We cannot speed up or skip the waiting period. It protects the person who named you.
• We never treat silence as a death. Someone who is in hospital, away or not answering email is not presumed gone, and no envelope opens without a death certificate.
• We do not give legal, tax or financial advice. The first steps shown when an envelope opens are general information. The probate court clerk can tell you what applies where you live.
• We do not decide who inherits anything. That is set by beneficiary forms, the will and the law.

5. Your information

We hold your name and email address because the person who named you gave them to us, and we use them only to send you messages about that envelope. If you report a passing, we also keep what you tell us and the certificate you provide, for as long as the review needs and a short time after. The privacy page has the details. You can ask us to stop emailing you at any time, though you would then miss a release notice.

6. No charge, no warranty

Receiving and opening an envelope is free. The service is provided as is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from what an envelope contains or omits, from a delay in release, or from what anyone does with the information in it, and any liability we do have to you is limited to one hundred US dollars. Some states do not allow these limits, so they may not fully apply to you.

7. Law and contact

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, unless the consumer law where you live says otherwise.

Questions, or a report you believe is wrong: write to support@suddengone.com. We answer every message.