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Custody Vault vs. Leaving It With Family
This is what most clients do by default. It is free, it is immediate, and it is the arrangement that produces the most litigation afterwards.
Consultations with counsel are complimentary. We can meet at the facility or at your office.
Side by side
| Category | Florida Intervault | Leaving It With Family |
|---|---|---|
| Inventory | Written and signed at intake | None — recollection only |
| Chain of custody | Every access and release documented | Untracked |
| If the relationship changes | Access designations are documented and revocable | Property is wherever it ended up, with whoever has it |
| If the relative moves or dies | Unaffected — the custodian is the facility | Property disperses into another estate |
| Security | 9R vault, armed monitoring, climate controlled | A closet, a garage, or a home safe |
| Later disputes | Resolved by the signed inventory | Resolved by argument, or by a judge |
| Cost | From $795 a year | Free, until it is not |
The fair case
What Leaving It With Family genuinely does better
Leaving property with a trusted family member is free, immediate, and requires no institution to agree to anything. It is also, in a large number of cases, entirely fine. Where a family is small, aligned and geographically close, a sibling holding a parent's documents is a workable arrangement, and a lawyer who reflexively sells against it is selling rather than advising. The arrangement's weakness is not the family member's honesty.
The failure mode
Where it breaks
It breaks on the record, not on trust. There is usually no inventory, so two years later nobody can establish what was handed over — and the dispute that follows is rarely about theft, it is about memory. It also concentrates a conflict: the holder is frequently also a beneficiary, which puts them in a position no honest person wants to occupy. Add the ordinary risks of a private home — fire, flood, a burglary, a divorce, a move — and the arrangement carries every household risk with none of the documentation that would let anyone prove what happened.
Our view
The honest verdict
Family custody is not wrong — it is undocumented. If a client is going to use it, the single highest-value thing counsel can do is insist on a written inventory first. A vault simply makes that inventory the default rather than an afterthought.
Other comparisons
Custody Vault vs. a Bank Safe Deposit Box
For a short absence the difference is minor. For a term measured in years it is the difference between property that is still there and property the state has sold.
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Custody Vault vs. a Self-Storage Unit
Self-storage has the same failure mode as a bank box and a worse one on top of it: Florida lien law lets the facility auction the contents.
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Compare it in person instead.
Tours are private and by appointment. You will see the vault door, the man-trap entry, and the box sizes in person. No account relationship is required to visit.