Frequently asked questions

Genlocker is a zero-knowledge encrypted digital estate vault. You store your wills, trust documents, passwords, insurance policies, and other important documents in a secure vault. Your designated beneficiaries receive cryptographic keys. When you pass away, a beneficiary submits an official death certificate — which we verify — and your vault unlocks and delivers each person's designated documents.

Most users complete initial setup in 15–20 minutes: creating an account, adding documents, and inviting beneficiaries. You can always add more documents later. We recommend setting a calendar reminder to review your vault annually.

No. Genlocker is designed specifically with non-technical elderly users in mind — large text, clear navigation, guided checklists, and phone support on Plus and Family plans. If you can use email and upload a file, you can use Genlocker.

Genlocker works in any modern web browser on desktop, tablet, or mobile. iOS and Android apps are planned for Q2 2027.

The most important: your last will and testament, trust documents, life insurance policies, financial account information and login credentials, your password manager master key, property deeds, vehicle titles, a letter of instruction to your family, advance healthcare directive, and any digital asset inventory (crypto, etc.). We provide a guided checklist to make sure you don't miss anything.

All file types: PDF, Word documents, images (JPG, PNG), text files, videos, and more. Genlocker is file-type agnostic.

Basic plan: 10 GB (more than enough for typical estate documents). Plus and Family plans: unlimited storage.

Yes. Many users record a personal video to accompany their legal documents — explaining their wishes in their own words. Upload it as any video file type.

Up to you! As a vault owner, you can decide whether to give beneficiaries access to your documents before you die or to require the death certificate verification process to be completed before they can access your documents. It is most common to have both types of vaults, one for things you want to be available to your beneficiaries before you die, and one for things you only want to be available to your beneficiaries after you die.

Yes. You control exactly which documents each beneficiary can access. For example: your adult children might receive full access to everything, while your estate attorney only sees legal documents.

Never. Beneficiary accounts are always free. They create a Genlocker account, accept your invitation, and receive their partial key — at no cost.

Beneficiaries can recover their account through our standard identity verification process. Their partial cryptographic key is securely backed up with them and can be re-issued through a verified account recovery flow.

Yes, at any time during your lifetime. You can add or remove beneficiaries, change access permissions, and revoke keys. Changes take effect immediately.

It's the only independent, government-issued proof of death. Most digital estate vault services allow access after an email goes unanswered or after a beneficiary self-reports a death — neither of which requires any verification. Genlocker requires official proof so that no one can access your vault while you are still alive.

A certified copy issued by a state, county, or municipal vital records office — the kind used for insurance claims, estate administration, and legal purposes. A photocopy or unofficial document is not accepted.

Basic plan: 48–72 business hours. Plus and Family plans: 24 hours. Our team manually reviews every submission; we don't rely solely on automated database checks.

We will contact the submitting beneficiary to discuss. Minor discrepancies are evaluated in context. Significant errors (wrong name, wrong date) require a corrected certificate from the issuing authority before access is granted.

No — by design, not just by policy. Your documents are encrypted on your device before they reach our servers, using a key derived from your master password. We store only ciphertext. Even if our servers were compromised, attackers would get encrypted data they cannot read.

AES-256-GCM at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit. Key derivation uses PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 with 600,000 iterations. Vault unlock uses a threshold cryptography scheme (similar to Shamir's Secret Sharing).

We maintain a business continuity policy. If we ever plan to shut down, we'll give you at least 90 days' notice and a full, portable data export in standard formats. Because your vault is encrypted with keys you control, your data is never entirely in our hands.

Genlocker is not a healthcare provider or business associate under HIPAA, so the regulation does not directly apply. However, our security controls (encryption, access controls, audit logging) meet or exceed HIPAA's technical safeguard requirements.

Yes — 30 days, no credit card required. Full access to all features of the plan you select.

You can cancel any time. After cancellation, you have 90 days to export your documents before your vault is permanently and securely deleted. We'll send multiple email reminders during that window.

Yes. If you are unsatisfied within the first 30 days of a paid subscription, contact us for a full refund.