Terms of service

1. What SuddenGone is, and is not

SuddenGone is operated by CloudVerg LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company ("SuddenGone", "we", "us"). Card payments may appear on your statement under that name.

SuddenGone is an organizer. It lets you keep a private record of your accounts and how to reach them, your documents, contacts and wishes, and it delivers that record to people you choose after your death has been reported, reviewed and a waiting period has passed.

SuddenGone is not a law firm and does not give legal, tax or financial advice. An entry or a note in your envelope is not a will, a trust, a power of attorney or any other legal document, and does not change one.

Papers you make here are your own. In your account you can put together a power of attorney, a health care directive, a will, a living trust, a digital assets authorisation and a letter of instruction by answering questions. These are self-help forms. You choose every answer, the document is assembled on your device, and you are responsible for it: for whether it suits your situation, for signing it and having it witnessed or notarised the way your state or country requires, and for keeping the original. We do not review what you make, we do not judge whether it is valid where you live, and we cannot witness or notarise anything. A paper you never sign properly has no effect. A power of attorney works only while you are alive and ends at your death.

A copy of a document stored in SuddenGone is a convenience copy. It helps your family find and recognize the original. It does not replace the signed original, and we are not the custodian of anyone's will.

SuddenGone is not an emergency service. A missed check-in sends an email. It does not send help.

2. Your account

You must be at least 18 and give a working email address. One account is for one person.

Your entries are locked with a key made from your password. We never receive your password and cannot reset our way into your entries. At sign-up you are shown a recovery code once. If you lose both your password and your recovery code, your entries cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. Keeping them safe is your responsibility.

You can add a second step at sign-in with an authenticator app, and we recommend that you do. Your password is still what seals your entries, so choose one you use nowhere else.

Tell us right away if you think someone else has gotten into your account.

3. What you may store

Your envelope is for whatever your family would need on the day. You may store, among other things:

• Sign-in names, passwords and the email address on each account
• Full account, card and policy numbers
• Social Security, passport, driver's license and other identity numbers
• PINs, passcodes, combinations, backup codes and security answers
• Where documents are kept, how they were made and whether they are signed, with a copy if you wish
• Health notes, care instructions, wishes, letters and recorded messages

All of it is sealed as described in the next section. Fields for sensitive values are hidden on screen until you ask to see them and are left out of a printed binder unless you choose to include them. If you print them, keeping those pages safe is up to you.

You decide what goes in and who receives it. You are responsible for what you store, for keeping it current (a password you change elsewhere does not change here), and for choosing the people you name. Think before storing something that belongs to someone else, such as a partner's Social Security number or the sign-in to a shared account. Store it only if you have the right to pass it to the people you name.

A sign-in is access, not permission. Storing a password does not give the people you name any legal right to an account. Many services limit who may sign in, and banks, brokers and insurers have their own process after a death. How the people you name use what they receive is their responsibility, and each of them agrees to separate terms for recipients before opening an envelope.

You agree not to store anything illegal, or anything you have no right to store or pass on.

How many entries, people and attachments you can store depends on your plan. The current limits are on the pricing page.

4. How your entries are sealed

Entries, letters, recorded messages and attachments, including every password and number in them, are encrypted in your browser before they are stored. We hold them only in sealed form and cannot read them. The tools our staff use work on accounts and never show what is inside an envelope. Some facts are not sealed because the service cannot run without them: your name and email, the names and emails of the people you choose, your check-in schedule and your billing status. The privacy page lists these in full.

5. The people you name

You may name people to receive your envelope. By naming someone you confirm that you may give us their name and email address, and you agree that we will email them to say they have been named.

Each person needs a key. The first is the card your browser creates for them; the code on it never reaches us. Getting the card to them and keeping it safe is between you and that person. We cannot replace a lost card. You can make a new one at any time, which cancels the old one.

A backup question. For any person you may also set a question whose answer opens the same envelope if the card is lost or was never handed over. The answer never reaches us. An answer is easier to guess than a card, and you accept that risk when you set one. Choose a question only that person can answer and whose answer cannot be looked up.

A person who goes first. You may ask one named person to receive their envelope before the others and to deal with a private clean-up list that only they receive. The others' envelopes open when that person tells us they have finished, or after the wait you set, whichever comes first. We do not check what that person does or does not do, and we cannot delete anything from a device or an online account ourselves. Do not ask anyone to destroy records that your estate, a court or a tax authority may need.

A stand-in while you are alive. You may choose one named person who, if you are alive but unable to act, can be shown the sections you picked for that case. They must tell us in writing, with a letter from a doctor. A person reviews it, everyone else you named is told, and a waiting period runs during which you or any of them can stop it. Only then are those sections, and nothing else, made available to that one person. Your account stays yours and you can end their access at any time. Being shown your information gives your stand-in no authority over your money or property; that comes only from a power of attorney or a court.

People to tell. You may leave short notes for people who hold no card, to be emailed when your envelope is released. Unlike your entries, these notes are stored so that we can read them, because we must send them. Do not put passwords or private details in them.

You can remove a person whenever you like. Once removed, they can no longer receive or open your envelope.

6. Check-ins

If you turn check-ins on, we email you on the schedule you choose. If you do not respond after three reminders and the grace period you set, we email the people you chose to say you have gone quiet, with any note you wrote for that purpose.

A missed check-in never releases your envelope. It only asks people to check on you. Silence, however long, is never treated as a death.

You can pause check-ins yourself for up to one year at a time. If you cannot, any person you named can tell us that you are alive but unable to check in, for example because you are in hospital or care, detained or in custody, traveling or deployed, or having trouble with your phone or email. Check-in alerts then pause for one, three or six months, the pause can be renewed, and the other people you named are told.

Email can be delayed, filtered or lost, and we cannot promise that any one message arrives. Do not rely on check-ins as your only safety arrangement.

7. How release works

Your envelope is released only through these steps:

• A report. A person you named and allowed to report, or a firm we have verified that introduced you to SuddenGone, tells us you have died. They give the date, state that the report is true, and supply a death certificate. Every report must include a death certificate, including a report from a firm.
• A review. A report from a named person is reviewed by a human before it can proceed. A report from a verified firm counts as reviewed.
• A waiting period. From the moment a report is filed, we write to you at your main and second email address, and again every three days, with a way to cancel it in one step. Every other person you named is told about the report as well, and any one of them can stop it at once. The waiting period is 30 days on the Free plan and between 7 and 30 days, as you choose, on a paid plan. If you had gone quiet or had paused check-ins when the report was filed, the waiting period is 30 days whatever you chose.
• Release. If the report is approved and the waiting period ends without being canceled, the envelope is released. If you asked one person to go first, theirs opens first and the others follow as described in section 5. Each person is sent a link. With that link and their card, or the answer to the question you set for them, the envelope opens in their browser. Entries you marked never to be handed over are deleted at release, unread, and your notes to people who hold no card are sent.

If you or a person you named stops a report, nothing is released and the person who filed it is told.

A released envelope stays available to the people you named for at least one year after release, at no charge.

We act on reports and documents in good faith. We are not able to verify a death independently of the documents we are given, and you accept that the review and the waiting period are the safeguards against a false or mistaken report. We do not release an envelope because of illness, incapacity, absence or silence. The limited hand-over to a stand-in described in section 5 is not a release: it reaches one person, covers only the sections you chose, and leaves your account in your hands.

8. Release never depends on payment

If your paid plan ends for any reason, including a declined or closed card, your sealed entries stay stored and the release process in section 7 still applies in full. We charge nothing to release an envelope and nothing to open one.

What a lapsed plan loses is the paid features while you are alive: check-ins pause, and you cannot add entries, people or attachments beyond the Free limits until the plan is paid again.

9. Plans, billing and automatic renewal

Paid plans are monthly subscriptions that renew automatically. Plus is $9 per month and Family is $16 per month (up to 6 people). You are charged when you subscribe and then every month on the same date, at the price shown at checkout, until you cancel. You can cancel online at any time in one click from Account, then Plan. Canceling stops the next renewal, and your plan runs to the end of the month you have paid for.

Payment is taken by Stripe, our payment processor, using the payment method you give at checkout. We do not receive or store your card number.

Canceling. Go to Account, then Plan, and choose Cancel plan. It takes effect at once and no reason is asked. You can also email us and we will cancel it for you. There is no fee for canceling.

Refunds. Payments are final and are not refunded, in whole or in part, with one exception: if a renewal is charged and you have not used the service since that charge, ask within 48 hours and we will refund that renewal. This exception can be used once per payment card.

Price changes. If we change the price of your plan, we will email you at least 30 days before the new price applies. If you do not agree, cancel before it takes effect.

Missed payments. If a renewal fails, your plan keeps working for 5 days while the payment is retried, then drops to Free. Section 8 always applies.

After a release. When an envelope is released, we cancel that member's subscription ourselves so that no further charge is made.

The Free plan needs no payment method.

10. Paying for someone else

You can pay for another person's Plus plan at $9 per month. It is a monthly subscription in your name, renewing automatically until you cancel, on the same terms as section 9.

The person you pay for controls their own envelope. Paying gives you no access to it and no say over who receives it. If you stop paying, their plan drops to Free at the end of the paid month, and their hand-off still works.

11. Firms

Funeral homes, insurance agents, advisors and other firms can introduce families to SuddenGone and may pay for their plans. A firm that introduced you can see your name, your email address and whether your account is active. It cannot read your envelope.

A firm we have verified may report a death for a family it introduced. Firms have their own additional terms.

12. Fair use

You agree not to:

• File a report you know or suspect to be false
• Try to open an envelope that was not left to you
• Probe, overload or attack the service, or get around its limits
• Use the service to harass anyone or to send unwanted email
• Resell the service without our written agreement

We may suspend an account that does these things. Filing a false report of a death is fraud, and we may pass the details to the authorities.

13. Closing your account

You can delete your account at any time from Account, then Settings. Deletion is permanent: your sealed entries, attachments and envelopes are erased and cannot be restored, and the people you named will no longer receive anything. Cancel any paid plan first, or deleting the account will cancel it for you.

You can download your entries at any time before you delete.

14. If SuddenGone closes

If we ever decide to end the service, we will give every member and every named person at least 90 days of notice by email, stop all billing on the day we announce it, keep exports available throughout, and complete every release that is already under way before anything is switched off.

We recommend printing your binder once a year and keeping it with your papers, so your family has the list whatever happens.

15. No warranty

We work hard to make the service dependable, but it is provided as is and as available. To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties, express or implied, including that the service will be uninterrupted or error free, that any email will be delivered, or that a release will complete by any particular date.

16. Limit of liability

To the extent the law allows, SuddenGone and the people who work on it are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or for lost profits, lost data or lost inheritance, arising from your use of the service or from a release or a failure to release.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one hundred US dollars.

Some states do not allow some of these limits, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

17. Changes to these terms

If we make a change that matters, we will email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. Carrying on using the service after that date means you accept the change. If you do not accept it, you can cancel and delete your account. We will never change section 8 in a way that makes a release depend on payment for envelopes that already exist.

18. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its rules on conflicts of law. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in California, unless the consumer law where you live gives you the right to bring it elsewhere.

19. Contact

Questions about these terms, a cancellation or a refund: write to support@suddengone.com. We answer every message.