Who Should See What: Setting Up Permissions in The Folder

Traditionally, two options, and both have a real downside. Hand someone a full binder or a list of passwords, and you've lost control of sensitive information the moment it leaves your hands. Tell people nothing, and you've left them with a scavenger hunt if something happens to you. Neither one actually serves the goal, which is: the right person can find the right thing, without seeing everything else.

Through a key, given to one person at a time. Not a shared password, not a link that works for anyone who has it — an individual key for each person, scoped to exactly what you decide they need. You choose what that includes, and you can change it whenever you want.

Say one of your kids is the one who handles everyone's tech support. It makes sense to give them access to your devices and password information — not your bank balances. Your attorney, on the other hand, probably needs your documents and maybe your financial advisor's contact information, but has no reason to see your retirement account balance. Same information, same platform, completely different keys for different people.

More than most people expect. Access isn't just on or off for a whole category — within something like your financial information, you can set Bank Accounts, Investment Accounts, Retirement Accounts, and Company Stock separately, each with its own level: No Access, View, or Edit. Someone can see your bank accounts without ever seeing your investments, if that's what makes sense for them.

Beyond generic access, The Folder tracks the specific roles your plan may already name — Personal Representative, Successor Personal Representative, Trustee, Successor Trustee, Healthcare Proxy, and Financial POA Agent — plus two roles worth calling out because they're easy to overlook. Assigning these roles up front makes it obvious who's missing, instead of realizing it later.

• Guardian, if you have minor children
• Digital Executor — a role your legal documents may not name at all, but that most families need in practice: someone responsible for accounts, passwords, and subscriptions, who isn't necessarily the same person handling the legal estate

Revoke it — instantly, from your end, no conversation required if you'd rather not have one. That's meaningfully different from paper: once you've handed someone a physical copy of something, you can't take it back if the relationship changes. A digital key can be turned off the moment it no longer makes sense.

Don't try to build the perfect permission structure on day one.

• Assign the roles you already know — personal representative, trustee, healthcare proxy, and the rest
• Give at least one person — a spouse, a close family member — broad access as a starting point
• Add narrower keys as it makes sense: your tech-savvy relative, your attorney, a sibling who's only involved in one part of things
• Revisit who has access to what once a year, the same way you'd revisit the rest of your plan