Your company should not die with you
Payroll runs Friday whether or not you are in the hospital. This workflow makes sure someone, but never someone acting alone, can keep the lights on.
The founder bottleneck
In most small companies one person holds the registrar login, the bank tokens, the payroll portal, and the admin email. If that person is unreachable for two weeks, invoices bounce, the domain lapses, and employees go unpaid. The fix is not handing a deputy full access, which trades a mortality risk for an embezzlement risk. The fix is splitting access so it takes three holders to reconstruct it.
The setup: five pieces around the company
- check_circlePiece 1: your business partner or, in a solo company, your spouse or most trusted family member.
- check_circlePiece 2: the company attorney, sealed in the client file next to the operating agreement.
- check_circlePiece 3: the company CPA, sealed in the file they already keep for you. Two professionals from two different firms means no one office can assemble a quorum.
- check_circlePiece 4: printed inside the corporate records binder, with the minutes and the EIN letter, where any successor will look first.
- check_circlePiece 5: your home safe, covering the everyday case where you are locked out of your own systems.
Nobody can raid the till
The partner alone has nothing. Attorney plus CPA have two pieces and professional licenses on the line. Reaching three requires the kind of coordinated, documented effort that only legitimate succession looks like. That is the test you want recovery to pass.
Put the rule in the operating agreement
Add one line to your operating agreement or continuity memo: master credentials are recoverable by bringing any three of the five listed pieces together in the HeirLock app, and recovery is authorized upon death or documented incapacity. Now the legal authority and the technical access point at the same procedure, which is what an orderly succession needs.
Test it like a fire drill
Once a year, confirm each professional still has the envelope, the binder still has its page, and the credentials behind the secret are current. If you rotate the master password, re-split the same day. For the personal side of the same problem, see digital inheritance.
Business owner questions
Why shouldn't my business partner just have all the passwords?
Partnerships end, sometimes badly, and a partner with unilateral access to banking and payroll is a risk in good times and a weapon in bad ones. A piece gives your partner a seat at recovery without the ability to act alone, which protects both of you.
What credentials should go behind the split secret?
The ones that can kill the company: bank and merchant accounts, payroll, the domain registrar, the primary email admin account, cloud infrastructure, and accounting software. Put them in a password manager and split the credentials to that manager.
Is the corporate records binder really a safe place?
A single piece reveals nothing, so the binder does not need to be secret, just durable and findable. It is the first thing an attorney or successor reaches for when taking over a company, which is exactly when the piece is needed.
What about my solo business with no partner?
Replace the partner slot with a spouse, a sibling, or a second professional, such as a second attorney or your banker. The shape stays the same: five pieces, three required, no individual able to act alone.
Keep payroll running without handing anyone the till
Put the recovery path where your partner, attorney, CPA, and records already meet, without giving one person every credential.
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