Legacy Preservation

A convenience copy of a recording, compressed for easy viewing or sharing on phones and laptops. It is the version the family actually watches. It is never the version that gets preserved. Compare Master Recording.

A file format chosen because it is open, widely supported, and unlikely to become unreadable: MP4 for video, WAV for audio, PDF/A for documents. Proprietary or app-specific formats are avoided because they depend on one company staying in business.

The person or entity designated to receive an asset, such as a life insurance death benefit. In legacy preservation the parallel term is Recipient: the person a specific recorded message is addressed to. The two lists are often different, and deliberately so.

The documented record of who has held a recording and where it has been stored, from the session to final delivery. It matters because an archive with no chain of custody is an archive nobody can vouch for.

Deciding what goes into the archive and what stays out. Preservation is not hoarding. A curated forty minutes that the family will actually watch is worth more than nine unedited hours that nobody opens.

The person who physically holds and maintains the family archive after delivery. Usually a spouse or an adult child. The custodian is chosen for reliability and follow-through, not for seniority, and the choice should be written down.

Anything of value that exists only in electronic form: photo libraries, email accounts, cloud storage, social media profiles, domain names, subscriptions, cryptocurrency. Many family memories now live entirely inside digital assets that nobody else can log into.

The written plan for what happens to your online accounts and digital assets after you die or become incapacitated: what should be preserved, what should be closed, and who has the authority to do it.

The person named to carry out the digital estate plan. Under Florida's version of the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, this authority generally must be granted expressly, in writing, or through the platform's own legacy-contact tool. Assuming a family member can simply log in later is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes we see.

A secure online storage location for important documents and recordings, with controlled access for named people. Useful, but never the only copy: an account nobody can access is not storage, it is a locked box with the key inside.

The set of legal documents that direct how your property, care, and affairs are handled: will, trust, powers of attorney, advance directives, beneficiary designations. It answers what and to whom. Legacy Preservation answers who and why.

An ancient practice, sometimes called a legacy letter, of passing on values, blessings, lessons, and hopes rather than property. It carries no legal force and is not a will in any legal sense, despite the name. It is the direct ancestor of what Legacy Preservation does with video and audio.

The person appointed to administer an estate through probate. In Florida the title is Personal Representative. Recording a clear explanation of your wishes makes this person's job dramatically easier and reduces the odds of a contested administration.

The complete organized collection of a family's preserved material: recordings, transcripts, photographs, documents, letters, and the index that makes all of it findable. The deliverable of a full Legacy Preservation project.

A written statement of a family's shared values, expectations, and intentions, often used by families with a business or significant shared assets. It has no legal force on its own but frequently prevents the disputes that legal documents alone cannot.

The core method of the service: a trained interviewer asking prepared, personalized questions rather than leaving someone alone with a camera. Guided interviews consistently produce specific, concrete stories. Unguided recording usually produces generalities and apologies.

Recording the story behind a physical object: the ring, the tools, the photograph, the deed. An undocumented heirloom becomes an anonymous object within two generations. Documentation is what keeps it an heirloom.

The table of contents for a family archive, listing each recording, its topics, its length, and who it is addressed to. Without an index, a large archive is functionally unsearchable, and an archive nobody can search is an archive nobody uses.

The movement of assets from one generation to the next. Studies of family wealth consistently find that transfers fail far more often from broken trust and poor communication than from bad investing or bad tax planning, which is precisely the gap a preserved record is meant to close.

Just In Case Kit
KARE Legacy's name for the household emergency preparedness kit: the one place a family keeps the documents, contacts, account information, and instructions that are needed in a crisis. The Legacy Preservation handoff plan is designed to live inside it.

Everything a person leaves behind, financial and otherwise. KARE Legacy uses the term in its full sense: the money, the property, the stories, the values, and the instructions for using all four

The physical location, drawer, binder, or safe, where a family's essential documents and archive copies are kept together. Its value lies entirely in someone else knowing it exists and being able to open it.

A written message from one person to another, meant to be read later, expressing values, love, forgiveness, gratitude, or hope. Offered as a written alternative or companion to recorded messages. See Ethical Will.

KARE Legacy's guided memory and message recording service: capturing a person's stories, values, and personal messages in their own voice, then organizing, preserving, and delivering that record to the people it was meant for.

An informal, non-binding document accompanying an estate plan that explains practical details: where things are kept, who to contact, funeral preferences, passwords, and personal notes. It carries no legal authority but is often the first document a grieving family actually reads.

The structured process of looking back over a life in sequence, from origins through turning points to the present. It is the backbone of a full life-history project and, in clinical settings, a recognized source of meaning and resolution for the person doing the reviewing.

A printed or bound version of a preserved life story, combining transcript, photographs, and documents into a book a family can hold. Offered as an add-on for clients who want something on the shelf as well as on a drive.

The original, highest-quality, uncompressed version of a session, kept untouched for preservation. Every other copy is made from it. The master is never edited in place and never the working file. Compare Access Copy.

Periodically copying an archive onto current storage and current formats so it stays readable as technology changes. The reason your family's VHS tapes and floppy disks are effectively gone. Recommended on a set schedule, roughly every five years.

A question, photograph, object, piece of music, or smell used to unlock a specific memory. Prompts drawn from a person's own life work far better than generic question lists, which is why the discovery conversation happens before the recording session.

The labeling attached to a file: who is speaking, when it was recorded, what it covers, who it is for. An unlabeled recording of an unidentified relative is one generation away from being deleted by someone who assumed it was nothing.

A message recorded now and released at a future event: a wedding, a graduation, an eighteenth birthday, the birth of a first child. Requires a written release instruction naming the trigger and the recipient. Also called a time-released message.

Multigenerational Session
A recording session with two or three generations in the room, often with a grandchild asking the questions. It produces a different and frequently better recording, because people answer their grandchildren differently than they answer a professional.

The part of an inheritance that has no dollar value: values, stories, traditions, recipes, language, faith, work ethic, humor. Surveys of families consistently find this is what heirs say they most want, and what they are least likely to receive.

The discipline of recording first-person spoken accounts as primary historical record, with established standards for interviewing, consent, transcription, and archiving. Legacy Preservation borrows its methods and applies them to one family instead of a public collection.

The documented history of an object or record: where it came from, who has held it, and how it got here. Provenance is what separates a family heirloom from an old thing in a box.

The preservation standard: three copies of everything, on two different kinds of media, with one copy stored somewhere else. A single cloud account is one copy in one place, which is how families lose irreplaceable material without ever making a mistake.

The written direction stating when a sealed or milestone message may be delivered, to whom, and by whom. Stored with the archive and, ideally, referenced in the estate documents so the instruction does not depend on one person's memory.

Guided recall of past experiences, used both as an interview technique and, in care settings, as a recognized practice that supports mood, engagement, and connection for older adults, including those living with memory loss.

A recording designated as not to be opened until a specified event, usually the recorder's passing. Held separately from the shared archive and governed by a written release instruction.

The document produced after the discovery conversation: the question set, the order, who participates, where it is recorded, and how many sessions are scheduled. The client sees and approves it before recording begins.

The shape of a well-told story: situation, turn, consequence, meaning. Interviewers listen for arcs rather than facts, because a family remembers the story about the day the business almost failed, not the year the business was founded.

The person who takes over the family archive when the original custodian can no longer keep it. Naming one is what turns a single-generation collection into something that survives past the people who made it.

A written text of a recorded session. It makes the archive searchable, readable by someone who cannot bear to watch yet, and survivable in the event that every video format eventually fails. Available in English, Spanish, or both.

The specific occurrence that releases a sealed or milestone message: a date, a birthday, a wedding, a death. Trigger events are written in plain, unambiguous language, because a vague trigger becomes an argument at the worst possible time.

A session focused on beliefs and principles rather than events: what you stand for, where it came from, and what you hope your family carries forward. Often recorded as a standalone project for clients who do not want a full life history.

A common and dangerous misnomer. A video does not satisfy Florida's requirements for a valid will, which must be written, signed, and properly witnessed. A recording that appears to contradict the written estate plan can be used as evidence in a challenge to it. Record the explanation; execute the will on paper with your attorney.

The client's signed authorization specifying how recorded material may be used, who may receive it, and what may never be shared. KARE Legacy does not use client sessions for marketing or sample purposes without a separate, specific written release.