Centuries ago, a vestry was a small room kept by a church. Keys, registers, vestments — the things a community could not afford to lose. A few people knew where each thing was. When someone needed something, they did not have to look very far.
The modern household is missing that room.
When a person dies, or is taken suddenly into a hospital, the people who love them are usually left doing detective work in the middle of the worst week of their lives. They call banks. They guess passwords. They search drawers for a will that may or may not exist. They wonder what their mother would have wanted, and they are not sure.
Vestry is an attempt to give every household its room back.
§ I
What we believe
On grief. Don't add to what's already being carried. Every interaction should relieve burden, not create it. We are uninterested in habit-forming product design. The right product, here, is one a person uses a few evenings a year and then is grateful for long after.
On trust. Trust is not a color. It is not a navy-blue badge with a checkmark in it. It is a receipt. We will earn it by architecture, by contracts, by the parts of the system we cannot do — not by the language we choose to describe it.
On language. Human first, lawyer second. We say executor, not fiduciary representative. We say when you pass, not upon your end-of-life journey. The people who use this product are tired. We will write for them.
On time. Estate planning is a decades-long act, not a quarterly one. We are building a company to be stewarded — not a company to be sold. Pricing for existing members will never rise. Documents will never be paywalled. If you cancel, you take everything with you.
§ II
A promise we put in writing
If a family is using Vestry during an active crisis — the days after a loss, the days inside a hospital — the service is permanently free to them. No tier. No clock. No clause.
Beginning before you need to is the greatest act of love a person can commit on paper.