extendme.org

Tier 04 · Steward

Your judgement,
still in the room.

All or part of your estate, held in a trust whose licensed trustee is contractually obliged to ask your persona what you would have done — and to write down the answer.

Start with the part most vendors won't tell you

An AI has no legal personality. It cannot inherit. It cannot be an executor or a trustee. It cannot hold title, contract, sue, or be sued. A will devising assets to a software system fails; a will naming one as executor fails on that appointment.

Anyone selling you "an AI that takes over your legal life" is selling a void instrument, and the first estate lawyer who reads it will say so. We'd rather tell you now and build the version that works.

The structure

A directed trust with an advisory persona

Authority always runs through a human or corporate fiduciary. The persona persuades; it never controls. That distinction is what makes the instrument survive. 

You (settlor)
  │  fund by will, pour-over, or lifetime transfer
  ▼
Continuity Trust ──── legal title held by ────► Corporate Trustee (licensed)
  │                                                        │
  │  instrument obliges the trustee to solicit and         │  owes fiduciary duty
  │  document persona advice on defined categories         │  to your beneficiaries
  ▼                                                        ▼
Persona (advisory only, non-binding) ──────────► written recommendation
                                                    entered in the trust record

Load-bearing details

  • The trustee is always human or corporate. Non-negotiable. They hold title and bear the duty.
  • Advice is non-binding. The trustee may overrule the persona and must record their reasons. A trustee bound to obey a machine has abdicated the duty that makes the trust valid.
  • Triggers are enumerated in the instrument — discretionary distributions, disposition of the family home, education funding, charitable allocation. Not "everything."
  • Everything enters the record with its evidence bindings from the provenance ledger. Beneficiaries can read what it said and what it relied on.
  • A human protector may suspend the advisory role if the persona malfunctions or fidelity degrades. Without this the structure has no failure mode.

Why it survives a challenge

A disappointed heir attacks on three grounds. This structure answers all three:

  • Capacity — independently attested by a clinician and recorded on video, with you restating the arrangement in your own words.
  • Undue influence — the persona has no power to influence anything. It writes a recommendation a fiduciary is free to ignore.
  • Improper delegation — the trustee's duty is never delegated, because the advice is non-binding and their own reasoning is documented alongside it.

The result is a stronger instrument than the literal version people ask for — and one an estate lawyer will actually sign.

What it looks like in practice

Twenty years of consistent reasoning

Your granddaughter applies to a conservatory. Under the instrument, education funding is a trigger category. The trustee submits the facts; the persona returns a recommendation grounded in specific things you said about music, about risk, about the difference between indulging a child and backing one.

The trustee reads it, decides, and records their reasoning. Your granddaughter can read both. In thirty years she can still read both.

That is the actual product: not control from beyond the grave, but your reasoning remaining legible and consistently applied long after anyone can remember exactly how you put it.

Requirements before enrolment

  • Continuum or Terminus in place
  • Independent capacity attestation
  • Your own independent legal counsel — not ours
  • Recorded comprehension check
  • Trust situs selected by your counsel
Fees

+$36,000 one-time to us, for persona integration, instrument drafting support, and the advisory interface.

0.45 % per year of assets under management is the trustee's fee and is paid to them, not to us. We never hold, direct, or take a percentage of your assets.

Not legal advice

Everything on this page describes a structure we build to. It is not legal advice, and it is jurisdiction-dependent — trust situs, perpetuities limits, and the enforceability of the advisory clause all vary. Steward enrolment requires your own independent counsel, and we will not proceed without it.

Bring this page to your estate lawyer.

If they can break the structure, we want to know. That's a better use of a first meeting than a sales call.

Reserve a place Steward in the tier table