How we research, review and correct what we publish.

Life Box publishes guides about subjects where being wrong has consequences: estates, executors, government paperwork, insurance and the practical mechanics of what happens after a death. This page explains how that material is produced, so you can judge how much weight to give it.

What Life Box is, and is not

Life Box is a Canadian service that helps a household organize the documents, accounts, contacts, property information, wishes and instructions their family or estate representative may one day need. It is not a law firm, notary, bank, registry, trustee, executor service, financial adviser or will-writing company.

Nothing we publish is legal, tax or financial advice. Our guides describe how public processes generally work in Canada, and what information a family typically needs to have organized. Whether any of it applies to your situation is a question for a lawyer, notary or accountant licensed in your province.

Where our facts come from

For any legal, tax or government procedural statement, we work from primary Canadian sources in preference to secondary commentary:

• The Government of Canada, Service Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency for federal benefits, notification and tax matters.
• Provincial and territorial government sites for death registration, death certificates, estate administration and directives.
• Provincial courts and probate registries for the process and terminology of the grant itself.
• Law societies and professional regulators where the question is about who may act, and in what capacity.

Where a page makes a legal or procedural claim, the sources supporting it are listed at the foot of that page and linked. We would rather send you to the authority than paraphrase it badly.

What we deliberately do not do

• We do not rewrite Canada.ca. Government sites explain government processes better than we can; our contribution is what to organize before any of those processes begin.
• We do not invent statistics, testimonials, credentials or reviewer names.
• We do not state that any document is legally valid, or that following a checklist satisfies any legal requirement.
• We do not publish advice that would require someone to breach a bank's or platform's terms of service.
• We do not change a review date to make a page look fresher than it is.

Authors and reviewers

Most guides are written by the Life Box team — the people who build the product and who spend their working days looking at what families actually cannot find. That first-hand view is our genuine area of expertise, and it is what we lead with.

Where a guide touches provincial law, tax or insurance practice, we seek review from a qualified Canadian professional. When a named professional has reviewed a page, their name and credential appear on it, and they have a profile page of their own. If no reviewer is named on a page, none has reviewed it. We will never attach a name or credential to work a person did not actually review.

Dates on our pages

• Published — when the page first appeared.
• Last reviewed — the last time a person read the whole page against current sources and confirmed it still holds. Reviewing a page and finding no change still updates this date; editing a typo does not.

Guides that describe provincial processes, thresholds or fees are reviewed at least annually, and sooner when we learn a rule has changed. Fees and thresholds in particular move, which is why we tell you to confirm current figures with the province rather than trusting a number in an article.

Corrections

If you find something inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, tell us and we will check it against the source. Substantive corrections are made to the page and the review date is updated. If a correction changes the practical meaning of a page, we note what changed rather than quietly editing it.

Reach us through the help centre and mark your message as a correction; it goes to the people who maintain this material.

Privacy in our editorial work

Nothing a member stores in their Life Box is ever used as editorial material. We do not read, quote, paraphrase or draw examples from member documents, names, accounts or uploads. Examples in our guides are invented. If we ever publish aggregate research, it will be from anonymized, consented, cohort-level data with no possibility of re-identification — and if the data cannot safely support a claim, we will not publish the claim.