Someone trusts you with eighteen years. Here is what it involves.
Being a guardian is a duty, not a job. It costs you about a minute a year, gives you no access to the money, and matters enormously twice: if a key is lost, and if something goes badly wrong before the child turns eighteen.
What you are actually holding
You hold one piece of a key, and a vote. Not the money — you cannot see a balance, cannot move anything, and cannot open the capsule alone under any circumstances. What you can do, together with the other guardians, is make sure the capsule reaches the child it was built for even if everything around it goes wrong.
The once-a-year part
Once a year we send you a short message asking you to confirm you are still reachable. One tap. That is the entire routine obligation, and it exists because the most likely way an eighteen-year promise fails is not theft — it is a guardian who quietly changed their email address in 2031.
The two moments that matter
A lost key. If the parents lose access, the guardians together restore it. Nothing about the capsule changes; the family just gets back in.
An emergency. If a family genuinely needs the capsule opened early, a majority of guardians must approve, a 60-day public notice runs, and any single guardian — including you — can veto it during that window. You are not a rubber stamp. Being the one who says no is a legitimate use of the role.
If you want out
Say so. Guardians can be replaced at any time by the family without touching the capsule, its balance or its unlock date. Standing down is far better than staying on the list and not answering.
What we will never ask you for
Money. A payment method. Your ID for a routine confirmation. If anyone contacts you claiming to be Till18 and asks for any of those, it is not us — and no legitimate guardian action is ever urgent, because every consequential one runs on a 60-day clock.
The role, in numbers
- Your time per year
- About a minute
- Can you see the balance
- No
- Can you withdraw
- No
- Can you act alone
- No
- Guardians per capsule
- 3 of 5 agree
- Your veto
- Always
- Emergency notice
- 60 days
- Cost to you
- Nothing, ever
You keep one printed share of the family’s fallback key. Any two of the three shares can restore it, so losing yours is survivable — tell the family, and they will reissue.
Being a good guardian, in four habits.
Answer the yearly ping
It takes one tap and it is the whole job most years. Two missed pings and the family is told, so silence is not neutral.
Keep your share somewhere boring
With your own important documents. Not in a photo on your phone, and not in a chat with the parents — the point of splitting it is that no single place holds enough.
Tell the family when life changes
New email, new country, new phone number. A guardian who is unreachable is worse than no guardian, because the family thinks the seat is filled.
Take the veto seriously
If an early-release request arrives and something about it feels wrong — pressure, urgency, a story that keeps changing — you are allowed to stop it on your own. That is why the power exists.