Answers, in plain words.

Create an account, then add a profile for the person you're caring for — just a name and your relationship to start. From there Handhold asks a few gentle questions to understand roughly where you are: still deciding, choosing a place, settled into caregiving, near the end, or after a loss. You can change that at any time; nothing you say locks you in.

Pick your best guess. Families move between stages and back again all the time — a "choosing a place" week can turn into an emergency, or a caregiving stretch can go on for years. Handhold follows you, not the other way around, so the stage is a starting point, never a cage.

Yes. Each person you're caring for gets their own circle, with its own contacts, its own family members, and its own stage. You can move between circles from the same account.

An Owner (usually whoever set the circle up) can invite others and manage the circle. A Co-caregiver shares most of the day-to-day: tasks, notes, funding, the family's key contacts. A Viewer can see what's been shared but can't add or change anything — a good fit for a sibling who wants to stay in the loop without taking on the work. Nobody sees another member's private Companion conversations or journal entries, ever, regardless of role.

From the circle's People screen, send an invite by email and pick their role. They'll see a plain-language preview of exactly what that role can see and do before they accept — no surprises on either side.

Yes, at any time, from the same People screen. Removing someone ends their access immediately; it doesn't delete anything they contributed while they were part of the circle.

You can name a designated successor in advance so the circle never gets stuck. If that wasn't set up, a Co-caregiver can reach support, who will verify their identity and the situation, contact the owner on every channel we have, and — after a waiting period, or immediately with a death certificate — carry out the transfer. It's a careful, human-checked process, not a button anyone can press unilaterally.

Papers holds two things. Documents — the POA, insurance cards, the medication list, discharge papers — stored with strong protection (encrypted at rest) and strict access control: only the people in your care circle you've allowed can open them, every access is logged, and Handhold staff don't browse them. Key Contacts — the names and numbers a whole family shares (the facility office, the doctor, the hospice line) — are visible to everyone in your circle on purpose. We protect your documents the way a careful app protects things. We're honest about the difference: this is strong standard protection, not a sealed, zero-knowledge tier — for the most sensitive items, a "sealed" store that even we can't open is on the way, and we'll say plainly how it works when it ships.

You control it. Sharing is deliberate and per item — handing your attorney the POA is you retrieving your own document, not opening the whole folder to the circle. Nothing is shared unless you share it, and you can see (and change) who has access at any time.

The core of Handhold — organizing, your papers and key contacts, family roles, and someone to talk to — is free. Plus adds the hands-on, agentic help: drafting messages, running the numbers, and similar heavy lifting. See the full pricing page for specifics.

Families who join during early access get Plus at $79/year, locked in for as long as they keep it — a standing thank-you, not a limited-time promotion.

From Settings → Subscription, cancel any time — no phone call, no "are you sure" gauntlet, no retention offers. Your access continues through the period you already paid for, and after that, nothing in your account is deleted or hidden from view. You simply lose the Plus-only hands-on features.

Write to support and tell us where things stand. We comp Plus for families going through it, no interrogation required — see the crisis note below if things are urgent right now.

Nothing needs canceling and nothing gets torn down. When you're ready, you can mark it in the app, which gently shifts the circle into an "after" mode built for that season — practical help if you want it, and otherwise just quiet. There's no deadline on any of this.

Family or an executor can reach support. Shared circle content stays available to the people it was already shared with — nothing about the circle's ongoing work is torn down. The account holder's own private Companion conversations are not released as a matter of course; that's a deliberate privacy line, not an oversight, and we'll walk you through exactly what that means for your situation.

We don't sell it, we don't run ads against it, and we don't train AI models on your conversations. Handhold is paid for by subscriptions, on purpose — it's the only model that keeps us answerable to you and nobody else.

Yes — a full export of your profile, memories, and conversation history, generated for you directly and never hand-assembled by a staff member reading through your account. It's available from Settings once you're signed in.

From Settings, or by writing to support. Deletion enters a short grace window first — grieving people sometimes act in a hard moment and deserve a chance to change their mind — and then it's genuinely gone, not just hidden.

If something you write suggests you or someone else may be in danger, Handhold responds with care and with real resources — it never argues, diagnoses, or tries to talk you out of what you're feeling. It also isn't a substitute for the numbers above; it will point you to them directly, every time.

Handhold respects your device's own text-size and zoom settings rather than overriding them, and we're steadily working through a full accessibility pass. If something is hard to use — a low-contrast screen, a control that's hard to reach, anything — tell support directly; that report goes straight into the queue, not a backlog nobody reads.