Use cases for personal and family
Put the plans, authority, and information your family may need in place before the moment arrives.
A family does not have to reconstruct its legal life during its worst week. A family's most important documents are often the ones nobody can find at 2 a.m.
45 named situations in 11 groups
In this domain
Grouped by how they arrive.
The foundation spans identity and family relationships, children and caregiving, home and property, health and emergency decisions, insurance, finances and benefits, estate and continuity, and the transitions of a long life together.
Every use case for personal and family
6 situations
Caregiving and the slow slide into incapacity
- Proactive or reactive
The POA the bank won't honor
A father's dementia advances and the bank refuses his nine-year-old durable power of attorney because it isn't on the bank's own form.
- Reactive
When a POA never got signed
A mother never executed a POA and now lacks capacity, making guardianship or conservatorship a possible court-supervised path.
- Reactive
The nursing-home admission packet nobody reads
A son initials a "responsible party" clause and a binding-arbitration addendum while admitting his mother.
- Proactive or reactive
Medicaid spend-down and the five-year look-back
A daughter transferred $40k to help her mother last year; now her mother needs long-term care and the transfer triggers a penalty period.
- Proactive
Putting unpaid caregiving on paper
A woman quits her job to care for her father; siblings later accuse her of "living off Dad."
- Reactive
Elder financial abuse by a family member
A widower's new "helper" gets added to his bank account and checks start disappearing.
3 situations
The scam economy
- Reactive
Grandparent and imposter scam aftermath
A retiree wires $18k to an AI-voice-cloned "grandchild" in trouble.
- Reactive
Romance and "pig-butchering" crypto scam
An online partner talks a widow into "investing" through a fake trading platform.
- Reactive
Online-marketplace and rental scam
A couple wires a deposit on an apartment listed on Craigslist that the "landlord" doesn't control.
6 situations
Digital and modern life
- Proactive
The digital estate, locked out
A husband dies and his wife can't get into his phone, email, password manager, or the family's only crypto wallet.
- Proactive
Crypto held by someone with no plan
A son knows his father has "a lot in Bitcoin" on a hardware wallet, but his father won't write anything down.
- Proactive or reactive
Data-broker exposure and privacy opt-outs
A domestic-violence survivor's home address keeps resurfacing on people-search sites.
- Reactive
A false, viral accusation
A parent is falsely accused of something in a local Facebook group and it spreads.
- Reactive
A deepfake image of a teenager
A 15-year-old's face appears in an AI-generated explicit image circulating at school.
- Proactive
Documenting a cohabitation before it's assumed
Two partners move in together and one of them owns the condo.
5 situations
Family formation
- Proactive
Surrogacy across state lines
Intended parents match with a surrogate who lives in a less parentage-friendly state.
- Proactive
A known-donor agreement
A single mother-to-be plans to use a friend as a known sperm donor on a handshake.
- Proactive
Second-parent adoption for an LGBTQ+ family
Only the birth mother appears on the birth certificate, and the couple worries about travel to states that won't recognize their family.
- Proactive
A never-married co-parenting agreement
Two friends who are not romantically involved choose to co-parent together intentionally.
- Proactive
Guardianship nomination for young kids
Young parents have a will but never named a standby guardian or emergency caregiver.
6 situations
Health and the law
- Proactive
The advance directive nobody can find
A father collapses out of state and the hospital has no way to know he has a DNR and a healthcare proxy sitting in a drawer at home.
- Reactive
A denied health-insurance appeal
A child's therapy is denied as "not medically necessary."
- Proactive or reactive
A special-education fight
A school district keeps "losing" a dyslexic child's evaluation requests.
- Reactive
A surprise medical bill that's wrong
A $9k out-of-network anesthesiology bill arrives after in-network surgery.
- Reactive
An involuntary psychiatric hold
A family member is on a 72-hour hold and nobody understands their rights.
- Proactive
The 18th-birthday authority cliff
Parents can no longer get medical or academic information about their kid the moment they turn 18.
3 situations
Immigration in mixed-status families
- Proactive
A family-preparedness plan
One parent is undocumented, the kids are US citizens, and the family wants a plan in case of detention.
- Reactive
An Affidavit of Support that outlives the marriage
A citizen sponsored an ex-spouse's green card, and years after the divorce the ex claims ongoing support is owed.
- Proactive
The naturalization document scramble
A lawful permanent resident applying for citizenship needs five years of tax transcripts and a complete travel and address history.
3 situations
Domestic violence and safety, done privately
- Reactive
Preparing a protective order quietly, at home
A survivor can't safely make calls or use a shared computer to seek help.
- Proactive
Evidence preservation before someone's ready to leave
Someone still living with an abuser wants to start documenting, quietly.
- Reactive
Coerced debt left behind
After leaving, a survivor discovers credit cards and loans an abuser opened in their name.
3 situations
Disaster, property and insurance shocks
- Reactive
FEMA and insurance on two fronts at once
A home floods, FEMA denies the claim, and the insurer lowballs the payout.
- Proactive or reactive
Discovering you're underinsured after a fire
A homeowner learns their policy cap covers only 60% of rebuild cost.
- Proactive
A living contents inventory before disaster strikes
A family wants proof of what they owned if the house burns down.
4 situations
Quiet transitions and everything-resets moments
- Proactive
Moving states and the silent validity gap
A family relocates, and the acceptance or legal effect of wills, POAs, and directives may differ in the new state.
- Proactive
Blending finances and estates in a second marriage
Each spouse wants to provide for the new marriage while still protecting their own kids.
- Proactive or reactive
The stepparent with no legal standing
A stepfather raises a child for ten years, then the biological parent dies and he discovers he has zero legal rights.
- Proactive or reactive
Divorce's forgotten cleanup: the beneficiary sweep
The divorce decree is final, but the ex is still listed on the 401(k), the life insurance, and a co-signed card.
3 situations
Death, aftermath and the matter that outlives the person
- Reactive
The first 72 hours after a sudden death
A spouse dies and the survivor doesn't know where the will is or what to do first.
- Reactive
A small estate told it needs full probate
A modest estate is told by a bank or court clerk that it "needs probate" over a $4k account.
- Reactive
Shutting down a digital life after death
Dozens of live subscriptions, social accounts, and a leaking cloud-storage bill survive the person who opened them.
3 situations
Cross-cutting
- Proactive or reactive
Pet custody and a funded pet trust
An unmarried couple splits and both want the dog, or a solo owner worries who takes the pet if something happens to them.
- Proactive
A child-travel consent letter
A single parent sends a child abroad with grandparents, and the border demands a notarized consent letter.
- Proactive or reactive
Inherited property with co-heir gridlock
Three siblings inherit the family home; one wants to sell, one wants to live in it, one wants to rent it out.
Through lines
What stays true across every situation here.
- The clearest pattern in the file is the valid-but-unusable document: signed, notarized, and useless at the moment of need because the right person cannot find it, the institution will not honor it, or the state changed.
- The document you sign on day one governs the day you leave.
- The emergency-access grant is as much the product here as the drafting.
- Privacy is safety. For survivors and mixed-status families, a private place to prepare is the reason the product can exist at all.
Start with the situation you are in, or the one you want to be ready for.
Join the waitlist and Briefcase will be in touch as access opens.
Pilots start as early as October 1, 2026.