Proof-of-Life Check-Ins, Explained Simply

The whole system depends on one mechanism: Dad Is Dead periodically checks in with you — a short email or text asking you to confirm you're still around. As long as you keep confirming, nothing else happens and nobody but you can see inside your vault. What actually happens when you stop confirming is worth understanding in detail, because it's not a single switch that flips the moment one reminder goes unanswered.

What counts as a miss (and what doesn't, yet)

Missing one check-in doesn't trigger anything dramatic. It starts a reminder cycle: a handful of follow-up emails or texts, spaced a few days apart, over roughly two weeks. Confirming at any point during that stretch resets everything and nothing further happens. It's only once that entire reminder window has run its course with no response — not one missed message, but a sustained stretch of silence — that the system treats it as more than a busy week or a forgotten email.

A custodian being notified is not the same as a custodian getting in

This is the part most people assume works differently than it actually does. Once that first reminder window closes with no response, two things happen at once: you get a final, more urgent warning, and your custodians get a heads-up that you haven't been responding. That heads-up is not access — it's a notice that something might be wrong, sent to the people you've chosen to trust with that information. Actual access to your vault only opens after a further stretch of continued silence beyond that point — roughly another week with still no response from you. If a custodian has genuine reason to believe you're fine, they can also flag that directly, which doesn't cancel the process outright but buys another full window before anything advances further.

You're never locked out of stopping it

At any point in this entire sequence — including after your custodians have already been notified — confirming that you're fine stops the process. There's no stage where a check-in from you stops mattering. If you know ahead of time that you'll be genuinely unreachable for a while — extended travel, time off-grid — you can pause check-ins in advance instead of letting the system read that absence as a missed check-in. And if a custodian is worried before the automatic reminders have even played out, they have a way to flag that concern directly rather than just waiting.

Why it's built this way

None of this is designed to make access difficult to get when it's genuinely needed — it's designed so that a distinct, separate step exists between "we haven't heard from you" and "someone else is now looking at your vault." A single missed email shouldn't be able to do that on its own, and it doesn't. The reminders, the heads-up, and the further waiting period before access actually opens all exist so that the system errs toward giving you every reasonable chance to say "I'm here" before anything changes for the people you've trusted.

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