Founding pilot open · invited families join free · write us
One afternoon with your parents, and your family stops guessing.
Life planning and family stories — made together, kept together.
Family Heartwood walks you through the conversation — the documents, the accounts, the things with stories attached, and what they'd want if someone else had to step in. You leave with a plan your whole family can see, and yours to take anywhere.
$124T
changes hands by 2048 — the largest transfer of family life ever
570 hrs
the executor scavenger hunt, when nobody made a map
68%
of parents haven't told their kids what exists, or where
The sit-down
Sit down together
Pick one topic for the visit — an afternoon each is plenty. Family Heartwood asks the questions worth asking, in words a parent actually wants to answer.
Capture as you talk
Photograph the paperwork. Record the stories in their own voice. Half-answers count — 'it's in the fire safe, somewhere' is worth writing down, and so is 'there's nothing to record.'
The runbook writes itself
Everything becomes a living family runbook: what exists, where it is, who to call, what they would want. Printable, portable, and kept current together.
For the three moments every family faces
The folder your family opens when the call comes.
Runbook № 1
The care transition
A fall, a diagnosis, a move to assisted living. Someone else suddenly has to sign things, pay things, find things.
Runbook № 2
After a death
The weeks when a grieving family becomes an administration. The runbook replaces the scavenger hunt.
Runbook № 3
The empty house
A house nobody lives in, utilities still running, a country away. Who has keys, what needs shutting off, what must not be thrown away.
You'll never wish you'd asked.
The questions feel hard until the afternoon you ask them — and impossible after.
Your data is always yours. That's the deal.
Seen
Every change is recorded in a family activity log that can never be edited or deleted. View-only by default; access granted by the family and revocable in one tap.
Yours
Full export any time, open formats, one tap. Even if you never pay another cent, nothing your family recorded is ever deleted.
Honest
Family Heartwood records that accounts exist and where things live. It never logs into anything, and it isn't a law firm.
Built for real families
Married fifty years, remarried last spring, divorced with two households, never married at all — no two families match a diagram, and yours doesn't have to.
Blended family? We designed for the real shape of it: two sides, one kitchen table. Each side keeps its plans to itself, and nothing important can happen in the dark. Name your sides, invite each branch to theirs — and the Legacy Holders at the center always see everything. It's their legacy.
And most of the people in a family record never sign in at all. The aunt who won't make an account, the neighbour with the spare key, a nine-year-old who'll inherit the ring one day — they're all in the record by name. Only the people keeping it current need a login.
Parents not ready to talk? Start without them.
Not every family talks — and every family still gets the call. Family Heartwood works as your own notebook too: collect what you know, research what you don't (who handles the water, the electric, the furnace), and keep it somewhere that can't get lost. If they come around, the questions will be waiting — and the runbook stands ready either way.
A record like this shouldn't live behind a meter that can lapse.
- The guided sit-downs — money, documents, insurance, bills, the property, valuables, and the people to call
- Stories recorded in their own voice, kept beside the paperwork
- All three runbooks, printable and always current
- The whole family invited in — view-only by default, every change logged
- Full export of the written record anytime, open formats — and nothing is ever deleted, paid or not
During the founding pilot, invited families join free — write us