Family Continuity Foundation
The foundation document for a household that wants its records held in one consistent system.
What this brief is
The reference brief for households building their continuity architecture from scratch — wills, LPAs, life insurance schedule, business succession references, the trusted-persons register, and the Letter of Wishes companion.
How this brief is read
Read the sample on this page, using the Pemberton-Walsh household throughout.
Open a free account and the brief becomes editable with your own data — your records, your trusted persons, your professional advisers.
Household Continuity Dossier membership (£195 first year, then £99/year) holds the record on the register, prompts the annual review, and issues the Governance Letter when a circumstance changes.
From the brief
The arrangements below are the ones that protect a young family if something unexpected happens to one or both parents. They are not designed to be acted on quickly. They are designed to be set up once, refreshed once a year, and forgotten about in between. The discipline matters because the moments these arrangements exist for tend to arrive without notice and without time to prepare.
Pattern reading: Your operational layer is mature — joint accounts and clear ownership structure mean each party has full continuity if the other is absent. The gap is the layer a named guardian or trusted person would need if both are absent. They know the family. They do not yet have a usable operating brief.
The four foundation records
In foundation order. Wills come first because they confirm the guardian and the financial arrangements for the children. The brief comes last because it depends on everything else being settled.
At your life stage, LPAs are most often relevant for temporary capacity loss — post-surgery, accident recovery, depression. With young children, the consequence of not having them in place is a Court of Protection process that freezes household financial decision-making for 16–22 weeks. Direct application via gov.uk takes one evening to complete.
The full brief continues — personalised with your household's details.