How to Upload Documents to Your Vault

Created by IronClad Family Support, Modified on Fri, Jul 24 at 10:23 AM by IronClad Family Support

How to Add Documents and Records to Your Vault

Here's the shift that matters most: your vault doesn't just hold files anymore. It holds records — and a record is the actual information your family will need, typed into fields, with the document attached alongside it.

Think about what happens if your spouse has to call the life insurance company next week. A photo of the policy is better than nothing, but they still have to squint at it to find the policy number. A record puts the carrier, the policy number, the coverage amount, and the beneficiary right on the screen — and keeps the PDF attached underneath for when the company asks for proof.

The short version: Fill in the fields. Attach the file if you have one. Save. If you only have five minutes, fill in the fields — you can always attach the document later.

Step 1: Pick the right category

Down the left side of your vault you'll see eight categories. Each one opens into subcategories, and each subcategory has a form built specifically for that kind of thing.

Personal — IDs, children & dependents, photos, vital documents, online accounts
Assets — financial accounts, property, life insurance, crypto, vehicles, business interests, valuables
Debts — credit cards, mortgages, personal obligations
Legal — will, trusts, power of attorney, health directives, guardianship
Health — medical insurance, medical history, emergency wallet card, pets, elderly care
Funeral — funeral instructions, burial plots
Personal Wishes — messages to specific people
Recipients — the people who will receive your vaults

This matters because the form changes. A financial account asks for the institution and the last four digits. A passport asks whose it is and when it expires. Putting things in the right place is what makes those questions show up.

Step 2: Fill in the fields

Scroll down inside the subcategory and you'll find the form. Fields marked with a red asterisk are required — usually just one, so you can save something useful fast and come back to finish.

Two field labels are worth understanding, because they're doing work behind the scenes:

“drives reminders”

Fill in this date and your vault will start warning you before it matters. Put your passport's expiration date in and you'll hear from us six months out — not the week before a trip, when renewal takes eight weeks.

“checked against your Will”

This is the beneficiary the institution has on file — the name the bank or insurance company will actually pay. That designation legally overrides your will. If your 401(k) still names an ex-spouse, that's who gets it, no matter what your will says. Recording it here lets your vault flag the mismatch while you can still fix it.

What each form asks for

A walkthrough of the most-used ones:

Financial accounts (Assets › Financial)

Account type — checking, savings, brokerage, 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, 529, HSA
Institution / bank name — required. Just the bank's name.
Account number (last 4) — only the last four. Enough for your family to identify the account when they call; not enough for anyone to do damage.
Account title — whose name the account is in. Joint? Yours alone? This decides whether your spouse can touch it immediately or has to wait on probate.
Who did the bank list to receive this account? — the payable-on-death name. Most people have no idea what's on file. Worth a phone call to find out.
Amount — a range, not an exact figure, so it doesn't go stale every month.
Next review date — drives reminders. Set it a year out and you'll get a nudge to re-check the balance and beneficiary.

Life insurance (Assets › Life insurance)

Policy type — life, health, auto, homeowners, renters, disability, umbrella, long-term care
Carrier — required
Policy number — the first thing the claims line will ask for
Coverage amount — so your family knows what they're entitled to claim
Named beneficiary on policy — checked against your will
Renewal date — drives reminders ahead of the renewal

IDs (Personal › ID's)

Document type — passport, driver's license, state ID, birth certificate, Social Security card, marriage certificate, green card, military ID
Belongs to — required. Add a separate record for each family member. Four people, four passports, four records.
Document / ID number
Issuing authority
Expiration date — drives reminders at 180, 90, and 30 days out

Online accounts (Personal › Web, social media & devices)

Service / site — required
Username / email and Password
2FA method — none, SMS, authenticator app, hardware key, email. This is the one people forget, and it's the one that locks families out. A password is useless if the code goes to a phone that's been disconnected.
On death: memorialize / close / transfer — what you want done with the account. Your family shouldn't have to guess whether to keep your Facebook up.
Last changed — drives a rotation reminder

Children & dependents (Personal › Children & dependents)

Name — required — and relationship and date of birth
Who would care for them if you couldn't? — the guardian question. Answer it here even if it's also in your will; this is where someone will look first.
School or daycare
Medical or special needs a caregiver must know — allergies, medications, the thing you'd say in the doorway on your way out
Anything else important about their care

Crypto (Assets › Crypto)

Asset / coin — required
Exchange / wallet and wallet type — exchange-held, hardware, software, or paper
Where recovery phrase is stored — not the phrase itself unless you want it here, but where to find it. Crypto with no recovery path is simply gone. There is no customer service line.
Who should inherit this?

Pets (Health › Pets)

Pet's name — required — and type of animal
Who should care for them if you couldn't? — ask that person first, not after
Veterinarian, medications or medical needs, feeding and care instructions, microchip number

Vehicles, property, mortgages, business interests, valuables, medical history, elderly care, funeral instructions, and burial plots each have their own form built the same way. Open one and read the labels — they'll tell you what your family would need.

Step 3: Choose which vaults get this record

Below the form is the vault picker, with a checkbox for each vault you've built. Each vault carries its own recipients, so assigning a record here is how it reaches people.

You'll usually want more than one. Your will might go to both the family vault and the attorney vault. Your emergency medical information belongs in the emergency vault, where it can be released right away, and probably in the family vault too. A record with no vault assigned is stored safely — but nobody receives it.

Step 4: Attach the document (optional)

Under Supporting document, choose a file to attach it to this record. One file per record — if you pick a second one, you'll be asked whether to replace the first.

Photos work differently. In Personal › Photos you can paste a link to a whole album — Google Photos, iCloud, Dropbox — instead of uploading files one at a time. Twenty years of family pictures aren't going into a vault one JPEG at a time, and they don't need to. The link goes in; your family gets the album.

Photographing a paper document? Flat surface, good light, all pages including the backs. Don't crop out signatures, seals, or notary stamps — those are often the whole point. Check the preview before you save.

Step 5: Save and encrypt

Click Save & encrypt to vault. Your record appears as a card at the top of that subcategory, showing its name, the date you added it, any reminder that's now scheduled, which vaults it's shared with, and the attached file if there is one. Everything is encrypted with your own keys before it's stored.

Changing a record later

Every saved record has a ⋮ menu in its top-right corner:

Edit details — loads the record back into the form. Change anything, then click Update this record.
Assign to vault — change who receives it without touching the fields
Rename — change the card's title only
Download / File preview — for records with an attachment
Delete — removes the record and its attachment

This is the part that replaces the old “archive the old one, rename it OLD” routine. You no longer need duplicate records for updated documents. When you refinance, open the mortgage record, hit Edit, and use Replace on the attached file. When the new will is signed, edit the will record and swap the PDF. One record per real-world thing, kept current — so your family finds one mortgage, not three, and doesn't have to work out which is live.

In edit mode, the attached document appears in a banner at the top of the form with two buttons: Replace swaps in a new file, Remove detaches it. Remove is reversible until you save — click it again to undo.

Where to start

If the whole thing feels like a lot, do it in the order your family would need it:

One financial account — the main one, where the money actually is
Life insurance, if you have it
Everyone's IDs, with the expiration dates filled in
Your will and any directives
Medical information and the emergency wallet card

Ten minutes on a Sunday gets you further than you'd think. Fields first — documents can follow whenever you get to the filing cabinet.

For your security, support cannot accept files by email or add records on your behalf. Always add records directly from a trusted device.