A Legacy Contact is someone you trust to carry out your wishes — usually a spouse, adult child, sibling, or close friend. You choose them, they accept, and they are the person who will eventually be able to see your finalized plan and act on it. But that access isn’t automatic or immediate. It only activates once Myend can confirm, through more than one signal, that you’re actually gone.
How activation actually works
Getting access as a Legacy Contact requires three things to line up, not just one:
- An Access Key. Every Legacy Contact receives their own Access Key when they’re invited. This is what identifies you as the person the account owner named — not a general support request.
- Email verification. You confirm your identity through email.
- Proof of Life having lapsed. The account owner sets up regular check-ins while they’re alive. If those check-ins go unanswered, Myend escalates — gentle reminders first, then notifying the Legacy Contact(s) — before access is ever released.
All three have to be true together. That’s deliberate: it protects the account owner from a false alarm, and it protects the Legacy Contact from being handed something before it’s really time.
What Legacy Contacts cannot do
While the account owner is alive, a Legacy Contact cannot view, change, or delete anything in their plan. Being named a Legacy Contact gives you a future role, not a present-day window into someone’s account.
What Legacy Contacts can see once access is granted
Once Proof of Life has triggered and identity is confirmed, a Legacy Contact can access:
- Finalized directives
- Goodbye messages written for them or shared with them
- The account owner’s contact list
- Vault items and other documents the account owner has shared with them
A Legacy Contact is a distinct role from a legal executor or a financial trustee — though the same trusted person can hold more than one of those roles at once. Myend’s Legacy Contact role is specifically about carrying out the plan documented inside Myend.
Support desk verification, as an added safeguard
If a Legacy Contact reaches out directly to support@myend.com to request access — for example, if they’re unsure the automated process has started — Myend’s support desk personally verifies the request before anything is released. Where possible, Myend will also try to notify the account owner and reach at least one other listed contact as an extra check, on top of the Access Key, email verification, and Proof of Life steps described above.
Setting yourself up as the account owner
If you’re the one building your plan, adding a Legacy Contact takes three steps: add the person as a contact, mark them as a Legacy Contact, and send the invitation. You can name more than one Legacy Contact, so responsibility doesn’t rest on a single person. Choose someone you deeply trust, since they will eventually see personal and sensitive information.
It’s worth keeping your Proof of Life check-in settings current, since that’s the mechanism that actually starts the release process. On the Complete plan, Proof of Life monitoring runs automatically in the background, escalating from reminders to your Legacy Contacts if check-ins are missed — so the people you’ve chosen are never left guessing.