Legacy
The part everyone avoids reading, written plainly.
Most services in this area are vague about death, which is remarkable given it is the entire point. Here is precisely what happens, who decides, what it costs, and how long it lasts.
While you are alive
You decide who, and how much.
Nothing about your vault after your death is left to whoever gets to your phone first. Every one of these is set by you, in advance, and changing any of them requires the strongest identity check we have.
Beneficiaries
The people who will be able to ask your vault questions. One on Lite, two on Standard and Premium, more at $4.99 a year each. They are named individually — not "my family".
An Appointee
The person who reports your death and provides the certificate. Deliberately a separate role: the person who handles the paperwork is not automatically a person who gets to read your memories.
Private Beads
Anything you mark private is excluded from beneficiary access permanently once you die. Not hidden by default and unlockable later — excluded, and it stays that way.
Or none of it at all
You can choose to have your vault deleted on death instead. Some people want to record a life for themselves and have it end with them, and that is a legitimate thing to want.
Verification
A person checks. Not a script.
Your Appointee submits a death certificate. A member of our team reviews it against the person you named and makes the call. It is slower than an automated check, and it is slower on purpose: the failure we are guarding against is a living person's vault being opened to someone they did not choose.
At the moment it is confirmed
Six things happen, all at once.
New Beads stop
Your vault is closed to additions. What is there is what there is — and everything that is there stays exactly as you left it.
The list locks
Your beneficiary list is fixed at that moment. Nobody can be added, and nobody can be removed.
Private Beads seal
Excluded from every beneficiary, permanently, with no override and no appeal process.
Connectors stop
Email, calendar and contacts disconnect immediately. Nothing continues to be collected about you after you are gone.
Drafts are discarded
Anything captured but never confirmed by you is deleted rather than kept. If you did not sign off on it, it is not part of what you said.
Your family can begin
Beneficiaries get their own separate accounts. They never receive your password, and they see only what you allowed them to reach.
What it costs your family
The first year is on us.
Every paid plan includes a complimentary first year of Legacy, with the same AI your family would otherwise be paying for. The first year after a death is not a moment to hand anyone an invoice.
Year one
Legacy, complimentary
Full access for everyone you named. No card required, nothing to arrange, no lapse to worry about while a family is dealing with everything else.
At the anniversary
$39.99 a year to continue
Any beneficiary can pay it, and paying it preserves access for all of them. You can also prepay years yourself while you are alive — up to five.
If nobody renews
Ninety days of notice
Beneficiaries are told the vault will be deleted, and reminded repeatedly across the ninety days. If the first beneficiary cannot be reached we escalate to the second.
Then
Deleted
Permanently, and we say so rather than leaving it ambiguous. Deletion never happens from silence alone — it happens after notice that was actually delivered.
Why we won't say "forever". Forever has no expiry date and no funding behind it. This category is littered with companies that promised permanence and then filed for bankruptcy, taking the memories with them. We would rather publish a retention policy you can actually hold us to than a reassurance nobody can keep.
What your family can do
Ask, listen, and keep individual things.
Beneficiaries can question the vault the same way you did, hear your voice recordings, and download individual Beads that matter to them — a photo, a recording, a particular story.
What they cannot do is bulk-export the whole vault. That is a consent limit, not a retention trick: it stops one relative redistributing your memories to people you never authorised, which would quietly undo every private-Bead and beneficiary decision you made.
The Legacy Bead
One Bead in your vault that you cannot write. You designate who may add it; after your death, they can — the only thing ever added to a vault once it closes.
It is where the answer goes. What they wanted to tell you, or what they want the vault's future readers to know about how it ended. It is the same generous size on every plan.
Early access
The best time to start was thirty years ago.
MemoBeads is being built now. Join the waitlist and we will write to you once — when there is something real to open.