Verification Standard for Confirmation of Death and Conditions for Release of eWills
At the heart of the eWill system is the release of instructions that will enable your assets to be transferred smoothly, swiftly and securely to your beneficiaries, after and not before your death. It is essential that we execute your eWill and release the instructions so that your time-sensitive assets can be transferred immediately upon confirmation of your death. However, it is equally essential that we do not release the information for your beneficiaries to take over your assets until we have verified confirmation that you have actually passed away. There is a free default option for this, and a paid-for Enhanced Verification Option. We have a strict, inviolable procedure for establishing final verification, but you, the eWill holder, set the standard of confirmation required for this verification and the conditions that must be met before your eWills are released.
There are two levels you can choose for the standard of Verification needed to confirm your death, before we can release your eWills: basic and enhanced.
The default option is the basic level, and part of eWill’s free service package. The basic verification is an automated checking mechanism via your email, and then if you don’t respond within 48 hours, we start to double-check every day via all your other instant messaging channels (WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, social media, etc.) for up to 30 days (according to your instructions).
Then eWill offers an Enhanced Verification standard for confirmation of your death which must be met before we release the instructions/contents in your eWill portfolio to the beneficiaries. The advantage is that it is faster and more secure as it requires confirmation from multiple sources. This costs USD 100 onetime, obviously for your full portfolio of eWills.
Verification at the enhanced level enables you to appoint up to 3 trusted Verifiers to add an extra layer of confirmation before we release the eWills to your designated beneficiaries. When you write your eWill, you should designate one or more “Verifiers”, together with their email address and alternative contact channels (mobile phone, instant-messaging, etc.). The people you choose to verify the confirmation of your death should, obviously, be people you know well and trust implicitly. They should also be people with whom you are in frequent contact, so they will know promptly if you have passed away.
To avoid any conflict of interest, we recommend that your Verifiers should not also be your beneficiaries. (For your physical will under local jurisdiction, your beneficiaries will not be allowed also to be witnesses.) In reality, for the transfer of your digital assets – such as immediately needed online accounts - you may decide that your Verifiers will indeed be the Beneficiaries. Whatever your choice, the eWill system recognises and implements your instructions automatically. When you initially select a Verifier, we send them an explanatory email advising them of how they should contact us in the event that they need to notify us of your death. However, an email sent by them is not accepted as confirmation of death; it just triggers the start of the Enhanced Verification procedure.
Our strict verification procedure is triggered in 2 ways:
i) Notification of death sent to us by one of the eWill holder’s trusted representatives (the eWill holder’s designated “Verifiers”); and/or
ii) Zero response to the periodic status check-up message sent automatically to the eWill holder’s email account as part of the basic service package.
Enhanced Verification
When the Enhanced Verification process has been triggered, we proceed to check by mail or alternative channels with your other Verifiers, and with the basic daily self-checking mechanism via all your other communication channels for the number of days you specified (maximum 30 days). There is a one-time fee of USD 100 for adding up to 3 Verifiers and all their contact channels. You may edit and update your Verifiers and their contacts without incurring any additional charge.
Final Verification
Upon receiving positive confirmation of death from your Verifiers, and zero response from your self-checking channels, eWill will accept this as Verified Confirmation of your death, to the standard required by the eWill holder. Having reached this "necessary and sufficient" standard of verification, we will proceed to release your eWills to the designated beneficiaries.
If eWill is holding any encrypted eWill files for you, these will be sent to the designated beneficiary, together with your instructions on how to access them. Simultaneously, eWill will implement the other instructions in your eWills for the scheduled delivery of messages, files, folders, etc., to family, friends and colleagues. Future delivery of messages, files, videos, etc., will be executed automatically by the system and will happen on the scheduled date in accordance with your instructions.
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