Living in the Netherlands, without the paperwork hanging over you

For Familiekluis, sovereignty means jurisdiction, control and keys. Data is only truly sovereign when all three hold.

Jurisdiction. All data sits physically in Europe, on infrastructure run by European-operated providers — not the “EU regions” of American companies. The US CLOUD Act can compel an American cloud provider to hand over data even when it is stored in Europe. We rule that out by working only with cloud storage providers that operate under European jurisdiction.

Control. We never process your data for purposes you did not set. No analytics on the contents of your vault. No AI model training. No selling, no reselling, no aggregation.

Keys. Content is encrypted before it reaches our systems. The decryption keys are split into shares — for example three shares of which two are needed. No single party, ourselves included, holds every share.

We are equally precise about the limit of that. Familiekluis uses a hybrid key model: our systems can technically reach the contents of a vault, because that is necessary in order to display documents, share them and release them under an emergency scenario according to your settings. So we do not claim that nobody can reach your data; we claim that access is limited, traceable and bound by rules. The security page sets out exactly how.

Existing software treats a family as one box with an administrator on top. Our data model treats it as a network of relationships, each with its own access.

A partner shares rights on joint records. An ex-partner sees only what relates to the children, if you choose to share that. Children get rights that depend on their age. A guardian, a person you trust, a carer, a step-parent — for each of them you decide yourself what they can see.

This matters more, not less, when part of your family lives in another country. You can link vaults across families — with parents abroad, with siblings — while staying in control of what crosses that link.

The Dutch notaris is a public office with no direct equivalent in most countries. A notary can formally record your wishes and confirm when a scenario should take effect.

Familiekluis does not execute deeds and receives no commission. The notary is an independent anchor, not an intermediary for our software.

You set up in advance what should happen at particular moments — a hospital admission, a move, a death. Who gets access to what, and when.

If you are new to the Netherlands, that preparation is worth more than it is for someone who grew up here: the people around you may not know which Dutch institution needs which document, and neither may your family abroad.

You export everything in the format it is stored in. No awkward hoops. After that your data is permanently deleted. No lock-in.