How to choose your trusted contacts

Naming a trusted contact for your digital vault is a different decision from naming an executor, and it's worth treating it that way. An executor needs to be capable and organised. A trusted contact needs to be someone you'd actually want reading a private message, or logging into a specific account, under specific circumstances.

You don't need one person for everything

The most common mistake is trying to pick a single "digital executor" the way you'd pick a single executor for a will. In practice, different people are right for different things:

• A sibling might be the right person to receive a personal message, but not the one you'd want closing your bank accounts.
• A partner might need immediate access to shared logins, while a friend only needs to know a specific message exists for them, unlocked much later.
• A solicitor or adviser might be the right person for legal and financial documents specifically, without needing anything else.

Splitting access this way isn't more complicated. It's more honest about how trust actually works between different people in your life.

Living access vs. release access

It's worth deciding, item by item, whether someone needs access now, while you're alive and well, for something like a shared family document, or only later, once something has happened to you. These aren't the same category of trust. Someone you'd happily give visibility into a shared insurance policy today might be exactly who you'd want a private message to reach only after you're gone, and not a moment before.

Say the quiet part out loud

The most useful thing you can do, beyond naming contacts, is telling them what you've done. A trusted contact who doesn't know they're a trusted contact can't act quickly when it matters. It doesn't need to be a heavy conversation. "I've set you up as someone who can access X if something happens to me" is usually enough.

Kistkeep lets you configure exactly this, who sees what, when, and under what condition, per contact, per item, rather than one all-or-nothing list.