57 — Legal (Documents)

The documents you never want to need are the ones you most need to have ready.

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What Lives Here

The family’s legal infrastructure — not the documents themselves (those stay in secure storage), but the index, context, and SOPs for navigating legal situations.

• Identity documents index — passports, IDs, birth certificates (location, expiry)
• Contracts & agreements — leases, service agreements, NDAs (summaries + file locations)
• Legal SOPs — what to do when you need a lawyer, how to handle a legal dispute
• Legal contacts — attorneys by specialty, their contact info, what they’ve handled
• Immigration/status — visa status, citizenship records if applicable
• Legal risk register — known legal exposures and what’s being done about them

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Suggested Folder Structure

57 Legal (Documents)/
├── identity-documents.md         ← Index of all ID docs with location and expiry dates
├── contracts/
│   └── [contract-name].md        ← Summary of each major contract (not the full doc)
├── legal-contacts.md             ← Attorneys and legal resources by specialty
├── sops/
│   ├── when-you-need-a-lawyer.md ← How to engage legal counsel quickly
│   └── dispute-response.md       ← Steps when facing a legal dispute
├── immigration.md                ← Citizenship, visa, naturalization records (if applicable)
└── legal-risk-register.md        ← Known risks and mitigation status

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Zeus’s Note

This domain is intentionally documentation-light on the actual legal documents — those live in 1Password and a fireproof safe, not in the codex. What lives here is the index and context that helps you (or your family) navigate a legal situation without panicking.

The identity documents index alone is worth the effort. When you need someone’s passport number at 11pm before a 6am flight, you’ll thank yourself for having it in one place.

Legal contacts is my other high-value file. Having a good real estate attorney, a family law attorney, and a business attorney in your contacts — with context on what you’ve used them for — is how you get help fast instead of starting from scratch in a crisis.