About GuidedEstate
GuidedEstate helps one person write down where everything is, so that whoever has to deal with it later is not starting from an empty drawer.
What it is for
Most of the work of settling an estate is not legal. It is finding things: which bank, which policy, who the accountant was, where the will is kept, what the password to the phone was. That work falls on somebody at the worst moment of their life, and almost all of it could have been written down in advance.
So this is a place to write it down while you can, and a way to let the people who will need it reach it when the time comes. It is used from both sides: by somebody putting their affairs in order, and by an executor working through them.
What it does not do
It does not write your will and it does not give legal advice. It records where your will is, not what it says. Whether a document is valid, who may witness it, what tax falls due and in which order things must happen are questions for a lawyer or notary in the place you actually live, and the answers differ between one province or state and the next.
What it offers instead is general information, written per jurisdiction, with the government or court page it summarises cited on every topic and the date it was last reviewed shown at the top.
What is in it
- Guidance for 74 jurisdictions across the countries below. 370 published topics, each citing its source.
- 333 organisations that may need telling after a death, filtered to where the person actually lived and to anywhere they held something.
- A glossary of 36 terms, which says what a word means where you are — the same role is called a liquidator in Quebec, an executor elsewhere.
- A printable sheet to keep with your will, so that whoever opens the envelope learns this record exists at all. It is the one part of this that keeps working with no technology and no company behind it.
The service is available in 9 languages. The guidance itself is written in English; that is a real limit and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
Who can see your record
Nobody, until you say so. You choose who to let in and what they may see, and you can withdraw it in one click. Somebody you name as executor sees what is still missing, and not the contents, until a death has actually been declared — and when it is declared you are emailed and given a day to say it is wrong.
Everything is encrypted where it is stored, under a key held separately from the database. That protects your record if a backup is ever lost or stolen. It is not the same as saying nobody here could ever read it, and we will not claim that it is.
The one exception is the vault, for the handful of things that are genuinely secret. It is locked with a password you choose and we never store. Nobody here can open it, and if that password is lost, neither can anybody else.
If we ever stop
A record that vanishes with the company would be worse than no record, because you would have stopped keeping the paper version. So you can export everything at any time as an ordinary file, and if this service is ever wound down it sends the people you named a complete copy of your records directly, rather than leaving them to find out that a website has gone.
Getting in touch
If you are dealing with somebody's estate and cannot get into their record, that is the most important message we get and we would rather have it early. Contact us.
The people behind it
Alicia Savage
President
With 25 years of retail and commercial banking experience, Alicia understands the problems faced by executors processing an estate.
Huba Vamosi
VP of Operations
As founder of multiple successful businesses, Huba skilfully handles the daily operations of GuidedEstate.
Graham Wright
Technical Architect
With 40 years in Networking, Document Management and general IT, Graham brings deep experience in online services and document security.