Straight answers, starting with the ones this category usually buries: renewal is $60 a year, canceling never costs you your documents, and your advisor can see that a document exists — never what’s in it.
Your documents are yours. No policy of ours ever stands between your family and what you stored.
Cancel anytime. Your vault contents don’t vanish because a subscription lapsed.
One-click download of everything, in standard formats, any day you choose — member or not — is in development for alpha.
$60 a year. The first year is $120 and starts with a 30-day free trial; every year after that is $60. That is the entire price list — no tiers, no add-ons, no fine print.
We put the renewal number in the headline on purpose. The most common complaint in this category isn’t about features — it’s about renewal charges people didn’t see coming. So the $60 appears on our pricing page at the same size as the $120, and again right here. If the price ever changes, you’ll hear it from us before your card does.
Nothing bad. Your documents are never held hostage and never deleted on cancellation. One-click export of everything is in development for alpha; at launch you’ll be able to download everything first — or after. Your vault contents belong to you, not to your subscription.
We’re explicit about this because some platforms in this category delete your documents when a subscription lapses, or make export hard enough that staying feels easier than leaving. We’re building the opposite policy in: export will be a standard feature, not an escape hatch. See pricing for the full cancellation terms.
Each company follows its own policy — accounts are typically frozen or closed once a death is reported, and any account your family doesn’t know exists may never be found at all. Paperless billing and autopay leave no paper trail for an executor to follow.
Legally, who can access your digital accounts is governed in most U.S. states by RUFADAA (explained below): your explicit instructions come first, the provider’s terms of service fill the silence. Practically, the hard part isn’t the law — it’s discovery. Your executor can only close, claim, or transfer what they know about. Trusted Directive gives your family a verified path to what exists and what’s still missing, so nothing goes unfound. Full walkthrough: what happens to my accounts when I die?
Your Trusted Contacts will be able to reach what you pre-authorized — no death certificate required, because none exists. Trusted Directive’s Verify-Silence Release Protocol — in development for alpha — is designed to notify you when access is requested; if you don’t respond within your pre-set window, the access you already approved is released.
This matters because most emergency-access models are built for death only: they wait for a death certificate or a formal report, which can’t exist for someone in the ICU or living with sudden dementia. We verify silence, not documents — Trusted Directive never adjudicates whether a death or incapacity has occurred; it only enforces the release rules you set in advance. For medical emergencies specifically, you’ll also be able to designate an Emergency Medical Packet (healthcare proxy, advance directive, insurance cards, medication list) for immediate release to the people you name — also in development for alpha. See how it works.
No. Partners see document metadata only — category, upload date, expiration date, and signals like “gap detected” — never the contents, never even the file names. The architecture enforces this; it isn’t a settings toggle.
That’s deliberate. Your advisor or attorney gets what makes them useful to you — “this client’s healthcare directive is missing,” “this estate plan is four years old” — without ever seeing what your will says or what your accounts hold. If you want a specific person to see a specific document, you grant that yourself, explicitly. Details on the controls behind this are on the security page.
It genuinely helps — a well-kept binder is one of the kindest things you can leave your family. But binders have a failure mode nobody mentions: the family that needs it doesn’t know it exists, where it is, or whether it’s current.
A binder also can’t tell you what’s missing from it, and a fireproof safe is only as useful as the number of people who know the combination. The gap isn’t effort — it’s discovery. Keep the binder; we’d never talk you out of it. Then make sure the people who’ll need it can actually find what it points to. We wrote a full guide (with a free printable checklist): the death binder — what goes in it, and where it falls short.
Because the problem your family will face isn’t storing files — it’s reaching them at the worst moment, and knowing what’s missing. A shared folder can’t verify silence, release access on your terms, or tell anyone that the healthcare directive was never uploaded.
Drive is free and fine at what it does. But sharing everything with everyone now is oversharing, and sharing nothing until “later” means your family faces account lockouts, two-factor prompts to a phone they can’t unlock, and an inactive-account policy at exactly the wrong time. Trusted Directive is built for the release problem: pre-authorized access designed to activate through the Verify-Silence Release Protocol (in development for alpha), plus document classification that shows what a folder never will — what’s not in it.
The plan is advance notice and a full export window — every document, in standard formats, downloadable by you. One-click export is in development for alpha; it’s designed to be a standard feature available every day you’re a member, not a wind-down concession.
It’s a fair question to ask any young company, and the honest answer is that no startup can promise you forever. What we’re building toward is that you’ll never be trapped: because export is designed to be always on, the worst case is inconvenience, not loss. Your documents also remain encrypted (AES-256) on our AWS infrastructure in the meantime — the controls are named, deployed, and listed on the security page.
Everplans pioneered the digital vault, has a long track record, and its guidance library is genuinely good. The structural difference is the unlock: access is reactive — a deputy reports a death, then the release process begins — which leaves incapacity poorly covered. Trusted Directive’s Verify-Silence Release Protocol is designed to work proactively and cover incapacity as well as death — a capability in development for alpha. Full honest comparison: Everplans vs Trusted Directive.
GoodTrust bundles inexpensive DIY document creation and offers a veterans plan — real value if you need documents drafted cheaply. Trusted Directive doesn’t draft documents; it protects the ones your attorney drafts, and tells you what’s missing. And where GoodTrust’s renewal pricing has drawn complaints for not being disclosed on its pricing page, ours is in the headline: $60. Full comparison: GoodTrust vs Trusted Directive.
Anyone you invite — a spouse, adult child, sibling, or close friend. Free view-only, invitation-only Trusted Contact accounts are in development for alpha: at launch they’ll see exactly what you grant them, nothing more, and they’ll never be able to edit or delete anything.
You’ll choose the scope per person: some access will be immediate (an Emergency Medical Packet for the person who’d meet the ambulance), the rest held back until the Verify-Silence Release Protocol runs — both in development for alpha. You’ll be able to change or revoke any grant at any time, and every invitation records exactly what was shared and why. Free means free — your family never pays to be able to reach what you left them.
RUFADAA is a law, adopted in most U.S. states, that decides who may access your digital accounts after death or incapacity. An “online tool” under RUFADAA lets you record explicit instructions that take priority over a provider’s default terms of service.
In plain English: without instructions, your executor is at the mercy of each company’s fine print. With them, your stated wishes govern. Trusted Directive is positioned as an online tool under RUFADAA — the sharing authorizations and emergency packets you set are explicit directions with a defined legal framework behind them, rather than an informal note a court can ignore. That recognition applies to the documents and records stored in your Trusted Directive vault — not a blanket authority over every third-party account you hold. (This is how the platform is positioned, not legal advice — your attorney can tell you how RUFADAA applies in your state.)
Still weighing options? See pricing, how the protocol works, the security controls actually deployed, or the honest comparisons with Everplans and GoodTrust.
Trusted Directive opens to a small first group soon — $120 year one with a 30-day free trial, $60 a year after. Join the waitlist and your invite lands the day we open.
Join the waitlist — your invite lands the day we open.