Help, guides, and answers

Life Box is a secure Canadian service for organizing the important information in your life — documents, accounts, property, health details, contacts and instructions — and making sure the people you choose can reach it if you die or can no longer manage your own affairs.

Adults who hold information other people would need. That includes parents of young children, couples where one person handles the finances, business owners, people caring for aging parents, and anyone who has been named an executor and learned first-hand how hard it can be.

No. Life Box does not create, witness or execute a will. It stores the will you already have, records where the signed original is kept and who prepared it, and keeps the rest of the picture your executor would need alongside it.

No. Life Box is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Speak to a lawyer in your province or territory about your own estate planning.

No, and it isn't meant to replace one. A password manager secures day-to-day logins. Life Box records which accounts exist, why they matter and how someone would reach the ones that count — including how your password manager itself could be recovered.

Storage is part of it, but a folder of files isn't a plan. Life Box adds structure: categories, the people involved, what's missing, and controlled release to the right person at the right time.

No. Many members start with no will at all and use Life Box to see clearly what they still need. If you don't have one, that shows up as a gap in your readiness score.

No. Serious illness, an accident, hospitalization or a stretch of time abroad all create the same problem: someone needs information you're the only one who has. Most of the value shows up while you're still very much here.

Yes. Life Box is built in Canada for Canadian households, with Canadian terminology — provincial health cards, RRSPs, TFSAs, RESPs, CPP, OAS, and the different names each province uses for personal directives and estate representatives.

A spreadsheet doesn't tell you what's missing, doesn't verify who's asking for access, doesn't remind you when things go stale, and can be edited or deleted by anyone who has it. Life Box does all four.

The guided setup takes about fifteen minutes and gets the essentials in place. Filling out the rest is something most people do gradually over a few months.

No, and almost nobody does. Anything you skip becomes an entry in Items to Add so you can pick up exactly where you left off.

Four things carry most of the weight: your will and where the original is, your life insurance, your primary bank, and the people who should be called. Everything after that is improvement rather than emergency.

Record what you know and leave the rest open. A partial answer with a name and an institution is far more useful than a blank.

Yes. Upload a document and Life Box reads it, suggests where it belongs, and proposes details to record — dates, policy numbers, institutions, people. You review every suggestion before anything is saved.

PDFs, images, Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations, up to 25 MB per file.

No. Most people upload documents and accept, edit or dismiss the details Life Box suggests. Typing directly is always available if you prefer.

A best-guess percentage showing how complete your Life Box is, weighted so that high-impact items — a will, an executor, insurance, emergency contacts — count for more than minor ones. It's a guide, not a grade.

The scoring library covers roughly 140 items across every category, and very few households need all of them. Items that don't apply to you can be marked as such so they stop counting against you.

Yes. Life Box works in any modern browser on phone, tablet and desktop, including uploading photos of documents directly from your camera.

Identity, family, financial accounts, insurance, legal documents, property, healthcare, business interests, digital life, key contacts, estate wishes, and the practical knowledge only you have about how your household runs.

Group life insurance through an employer, a pension from a job they left years ago, the location of the safe combination, which drawer holds the paperwork, and who the neighbour with the spare key is.

Store what genuinely needs to pass on, and keep it minimal. For most people that's the recovery path to a primary email account and a password manager, not a list of every login.

Upload copies. Keep signed originals — a will, birth certificate, property title — physically secure, and record in Life Box exactly where they are.

Yes. Personal messages for the people you love can be saved alongside everything else and released under the same rules.

Yes. Incorporation details, signing authority, payroll, key contracts, advisors and written continuity instructions all have a place. For business owners this is often the most urgent category.

Individual files are capped at 25 MB. Ordinary household use is well within what a membership includes; we'll reach out directly in the rare case of unusually heavy use.

Yes. The categories are a starting structure, and you can add your own items, notes and instructions anywhere they fit.

Yes. You can ask plain questions — 'who is my executor?', 'where is the safe combination?' — and get answers grounded in your own records, with the source document and date shown.

Someone you name to receive access to part or all of your Life Box if you die or can no longer manage your affairs — commonly an executor, estate trustee, liquidator, attorney under a power of attorney, or a trusted family member.

Only if you deliberately choose to share something with them today. By default, representatives have no access until a claim is verified and approved.

As many as makes sense for your situation, including alternates. Most people name a primary and one backup.

Yes. Release rules are set per representative, so your executor can receive the estate and financial material while a sibling receives only the personal messages and funeral wishes.

They create one only when a claim is approved. There's nothing for them to do — and nothing to pay — before then.

Never. The people you name are never charged to receive access.

Yes, and it's worth asking rather than assuming. The single most common estate problem is someone learning at the worst possible moment that they're responsible.

Any time, and the change takes effect immediately. Every change is recorded in your audit log.

Access passes to whichever alternate you've named. If no alternate exists, Life Box will flag it as a gap in your readiness score.

Your representative submits an access claim with identification and proof of authority. A person at Life Box reviews it. If it's approved, they receive exactly what your release rules allow — no more.

No. Knowing your email address, being a family member, or uploading a document never grants access on its own. Every claim is reviewed by a human against documentation.

Typically a government-issued death certificate or funeral director's statement, government photo identification for the person claiming, and evidence of their authority — a will naming them, letters probate, or an equivalent court appointment.

We aim to complete review within a few business days of receiving complete documentation. Incomplete submissions take longer because we come back with questions rather than guessing.

Yes. Any incapacity claim triggers notifications to you through every channel on file, plus a waiting period before access can be granted, so a false claim can be stopped.

Incapacity claims follow a separate path requiring medical documentation, and they trigger the notification and waiting period described above.

Yes. If a claim turns out to be improper, access is revoked and the full history of what was viewed is available in the audit log.

Alternates you've named are contacted in order. This is why naming a backup matters more than most people expect.

Files are held in private storage that is never publicly reachable, encrypted in transit and at rest, with database-level access rules that scope every record to its owner. Downloads use short-lived links that expire.

Staff do not browse member content. Access to production systems is restricted, logged, and used only where strictly necessary to operate the service or complete a verified claim review.

Your information is stored with our infrastructure provider on encrypted, access-controlled systems. Details of our current hosting arrangements are set out on the Security page.

No. Your information is never sold, rented, or used for advertising.

Yes, and we strongly recommend enabling it. Your Life Box is only as secure as the account that opens it.

Yes. An audit log records access events, changes and claim activity, and it's visible to you at any time.

We would notify affected members and the appropriate privacy authorities as required by Canadian law, and tell you plainly what happened and what to do.

You can reset it by email. Because your Life Box is protected by that account, keep the recovery path for your primary email secure and up to date — and record it in your Life Box.

AI reads documents you upload to suggest a category and pull out details — dates, numbers, institutions, names. It also powers the plain-language search across your own records.

No. Nothing about access, release or verification is automated. AI reduces typing; people make decisions.

No. Your documents are not used to train models.

Every suggestion is presented for review with the source it came from. You accept, edit or dismiss it — nothing is written to your Life Box without your say-so.

Yes. You can enter everything manually and simply dismiss suggestions if you'd rather not use them.

C$49.99/year plus applicable tax. Billed annually. Cancel anytime. Representatives never pay.

Because the job isn't one-time. Storage, security, human claim review and annual checkups are ongoing obligations, and a service that has to be there in ten years needs to be funded to still exist in ten years.

C$49.99/year is our introductory rate as we grow. If the standard price rises later, we'll tell existing members in advance and treat them fairly.

You can create an account and look around before activating. A membership is required to start uploading documents and storing information.

Any time. Your membership stays active until the end of the period you've paid for.

Your Life Box moves to a limited state rather than being deleted. You keep the ability to view and export what's there, and you can reactivate whenever you want.

We do not delete an account because a payment failed. When a verified death claim is in progress, destructive automated actions are frozen while the estate is handled.

Yes — full refunds are available within 30 days of a charge. Payments are handled by our reseller, Paddle, who processes refunds and billing enquiries.

A membership covers one person's Life Box. Couples usually keep separate boxes, because an executor, a set of accounts and a set of wishes are personal.

Not yet. If you're interested in covering several family members, get in touch and tell us what you need.

Once a year we prompt you to review what's changed, refresh anything out of date, and record a new message for the people you love. It takes a few minutes and it's what keeps a Life Box from quietly becoming wrong.

Once a year at minimum, and immediately after a major change: a move, a marriage or separation, a birth, a new job, a new mortgage, a death in the family, or a diagnosis.

Yes. Reminders come by email, and you can enable browser notifications for security-related alerts as well.

Yes, in Settings — though the annual checkup is the single habit that keeps everything else worth having.

Items carry a last-reviewed date, and anything that has gone stale surfaces in your dashboard alongside your readiness score.

Yes. Export your Life Box from Settings whenever you want, including your documents.

Yes. Deletion removes your content from active systems, with backups aging out on their normal cycle. It cannot be undone.

We would give members clear advance notice and a window to export everything. That's also why keeping physical originals and an exported copy is good practice regardless.

Yes, and many members do. A printed summary in a safe alongside your originals is a sensible complement to a digital Life Box, not a contradiction of it.

Reach us from Settings once you're signed in, and a person will answer.