Your Legacy Contacts are the people you trust to carry out your wishes and access your Myend plan after you’re gone. Think of them as your trustees: the ones who make sure your plan doesn’t just sit in an account no one can reach.
Who can be a Legacy Contact?
As a general rule, anyone over the age of 18 is eligible. Most people choose a spouse, an adult child, a sibling, or a close friend: someone they deeply trust with personal information. A lawyer can also be named. A Legacy Contact is different from a legal executor or financial trustee, though they can be the same person.
You can invite as few or as many Legacy Contacts as you like: one is enough to get started, though two or three is common, especially if you’d rather split responsibilities than put everything on one person’s shoulders.
How someone becomes a Legacy Contact
- Add the person as a contact in Myend.
- Mark them as a Legacy Contact.
- Send the invitation: they receive an Access Key and get a free Myend account of their own.
When (and how) they get access
This is the part people worry about most, so it’s worth being precise: a Legacy Contact gets no access at all while you’re alive. They cannot view your plan, change anything, or see what you’ve written just because you’ve named them.
Access only unlocks after all of the following are true:
- Your Proof of Life check-ins have lapsed: Myend’s automated, scheduled check-ins first send you gentle reminders, and only escalate to notifying your Legacy Contacts if you don’t respond.
- The Legacy Contact verifies their identity with their Access Key.
- They confirm by email.
All three have to line up before anything is released, so nothing is ever handed over by accident or by a single missed check-in.
What Legacy Contacts can see
Once access is triggered, Legacy Contacts can view:
- Your finalized directives (healthcare, funeral, donor, and others)
- Your goodbye messages written for them or shared with them
- Your contact list
- Vault items you’ve shared with them
What they cannot do, even after access is granted: change your plans, delete anything you wrote, or otherwise alter your account. Their access is read-only (meant for carrying out your wishes, not managing your plan).
Splitting responsibilities across multiple contacts
If you appoint more than one Legacy Contact, you don’t have to give them identical jobs. It’s common to ask different people to take care of different matters. Talk this through with each person so everyone knows what you’re expecting of them.
Choosing wisely
Legacy Contacts are sometimes asked to make difficult, personal decisions on your behalf, so choose people you trust completely (not just with logistics, but with sensitive information about your life and wishes). You can change who you’ve appointed at any point in the future, so this isn’t a decision you’re locked into.
Everything you share with your Legacy Contacts is protected the same way the rest of your Myend plan is: encrypted, never used to train AI, and never accessible to anyone (including Myend) before your Proof of Life check-ins confirm it’s time.