Stemma gives each client household one working record — access, documents, locations, and instructions kept beside their context — with a verified release for the day your work is needed, and custody that never asks your firm to hold a client secret.
The legal work and the financial work both end at a practical question: will the people involved actually find what the plan refers to?
A plan is only as strong as the records behind it. When a client keeps access details, original-document locations, and instructions in one working record, the executor you appointed starts from a reading assignment instead of an investigation.
Accounts, policies, and beneficiary context kept beside the practical notes a household needs. The annual conversation starts from a current record instead of a shoebox reconstruction.
The alternative professionals see most often is a password on a sticky note and a hope. Stemma replaces it with a release that has named people and defined steps.
The vault owner sets a check-in cadence. A missed check-in opens a grace period with notice across every channel the client configured — nothing releases while they can still answer.
Release requires independent confirmation from trusted people the client named in advance. A single email or a single support request is not enough to open a vault.
On a verified release, the record is preserved as the client left it. Named recipients receive read-only access to what was shared with them — each item beside the context that explains it.
When custody is zero-knowledge, the uncomfortable questions get shorter. There is no readable archive on our servers to breach, and no firm-side copy your practice has to safeguard, insure, or produce.
Vault contents are encrypted on the client’s device before upload. The service holds ciphertext and account metadata — not readable records.
Opening a vault requires the client’s master password and their secret key. Stemma stores neither, and cannot reset either one into the vault.
An encrypted export and account metadata remain subject to valid legal process. Decrypted vault contents, derived from ciphertext alone, are not something we can produce — for anyone.
A record that is only opened at the end never gets filled. This one earns its place in the household year by year — which is what keeps it accurate for the day it matters.
A household record that is revisited when accounts change gives the review a current starting point — and gives your advice a place to land between meetings.
Statements, deeds, and policies kept together with their context, so the conversation starts from the record instead of a search through last year’s email.
A sale, a birth, a new executor: the client updates the record when life changes it, and the plan you drafted keeps describing reality.
Stemma is not a legal service, an asset custodian, or a substitute for the plan. It is the working record your plan refers to — and it stays in the client's hands, not yours.
Judge the product the way a fiduciary would: put a real record in it, hand the emergency kit to someone, and see whether the release story holds.
Where counsel judges it appropriate, the plan can acknowledge the vault as the client’s record of digital assets, with the emergency kit filed beside the estate documents.
The household does the organizing on its own time. Your file stays the legal authority; the vault keeps the practical detail the file was never meant to hold.
When the release comes, the people you appointed begin with the accounts named, the locations written down, and the instructions in context.
We are opening a small founding cohort of estate attorneys and financial advisors. Founding professionals get early access for themselves and their clients, a direct line to the team building the product, and a real say in how the professional workflow takes shape. What we do not have yet, we will not pretend to have: no partner portal, no referral fees, no client counts to cite. That is what founding means.
Open one, put a real record in it, and decide whether the release story would hold for your clients.