Family Coverage groups recorded policy death benefit by household person. It is a tracking and visualization surface, not an insurance analysis or purchase calculator.
Start With People
When the map is empty, select Add people and add yourself first, then a partner or spouse, children or dependents, and any other person named on a policy. Adding a person records their name and living status only. Relationships and policies are recorded afterwards from that person's card, so you can add everyone first and connect them later.
After people exist, unlinked policies appear in the reconciliation queue. Select the matching person to link a policy; if no insured name is recorded, the policy nickname or type is shown. An unlinked policy is not included in any person bucket or household known-linked total.
The Graph And How You Build It
The family graph is a read-only picture of how the people you have added connect. You do not edit it directly. Relationships are recorded through dropdowns on a person's card, and the graph redraws to match.
To record a relationship, open a person, choose the relationship type, pick the other person, and — for a parent relationship — set the direction (who is the parent, who is the child). Two types can be recorded: parent and child, and spouse or partner. Both are what the graph reads to lay out generations and derive siblings.
A person can have more than one parent. Open the child, record the first parent, then record the second the same way. Each connection is stored separately, and Policy Stack never labels a child as half or whole.
Siblings and cousins are not recorded as separate relationships. They are read from the parent connections already on the map.
On a narrow screen the graph is presented as a list. The list is also the version read by screen readers.
Removing Someone From The Map
Open a person and choose Remove from map. They leave the current map and stop counting toward the household total, but nothing is deleted: their recorded policies, relationships, and goals are kept exactly as they were. Removed people are listed under Removed from map at the foot of the page, and Put back on the map restores them.
Relationships have the same shape but two different actions. End records that a relationship was real and is now over, and it moves to Family history with its end date. Remove deletes one recorded by mistake, because filing something that was never true into Family history would misstate the household.
Linking Policies
Open a person and use Link a policy to attach a policy where that person is the insured. Unlinked policy names also appear in the reconciliation queue until you assign them.
Permanently Deleting Someone
Use Permanently delete person only when the Family Coverage person record should be erased. This permanently removes the person, Family Coverage history, relationships, references, and goals. The underlying policy records remain, but every link to that person is released and the policies return to the reconciliation queue so they can be linked to another person. The action cannot be undone; add a new person afterwards if needed.
Ending A Relationship
Open a person and choose End on a relationship. Ending it never deletes it or either person. Ended relationships move out of the current map into Family history, where they remain visible along with the date they ended, and stop being drawn as current.
What the Map Shows
- Permanent Actual from active, visible permanent policy records
- Term Actual from active, visible term policy records
- Other/Unknown Actual when the policy type cannot be classified into Permanent or Term
- Total Actual across the visible included records
- Adult HLV Goal when that adult has a selected Human Life Value scenario saved as the Modeled Family Coverage goal
Only explicit person-policy links count. Policy Stack does not link records by matching names.
The Completeness Ring
Each person carries a ring beside their name. It reports exactly one thing: whether a current death-benefit value is recorded for that person.
- Complete ring — every included policy has a value dated within 12 months
- Partial ring — a value is missing, or the most recent one is older than 12 months
- Dashed ring — no policy is recorded for this person
The ring never shows how much coverage someone holds, never compares one person with another, and never fills toward a Human Life Value goal. It is a record-keeping signal, not a measure of whether coverage is sufficient.
Siblings, Nieces, Nephews and Cousins
These are never stored. They are worked out from the parent relationships you record, so two children of the same parent read as siblings without anyone entering a sibling relationship.
Lateral kin resolves only when the connecting person is already on the map. A niece reads as a niece once your sibling — and the parent the two of you share — are recorded. Policy Stack never adds a person purely to make a line reach.
Wider Family
Someone recorded on a policy but with no recorded relationship appears under Wider family with their own card, coverage, and ring. Their line to the household is not drawn, and no connecting person is invented for them.
Record the connecting person for their own reason — a policy of their own — and the relationship resolves on its own. The map fills in as the recorded picture becomes more complete, never as a place to enter family history for its own sake.
Adult Goals
For adults, the Human Life Value calculator is the goal-setting tool for Family Coverage. Open it from a person's review link or choose a living person in the calculator's picker. It models a goal one of two ways: from that person's own annual earned income and age, using an age-based factor, or — for a person without earned income — from a working spouse's saved goal, carried forward in full when it is under $1,000,000 and at half when it is $1,000,000 or more. Saving requires an explicit confirmation that the selected person is an adult; Policy Stack does not derive adulthood from a birth date. The save stores an immutable Modeled snapshot and marks it as that person's selected Family Coverage goal. Saving an earned-income goal also refreshes a working spouse's already-derived goal, if one exists.
Family Coverage imports that saved result and provenance. It does not recalculate the HLV model on the map.
Child Records
Children stay factual. Their records show recorded policy values, carrier-provided Actual references, or household-selected Planned goals when those records exist. Policy Stack does not default children into earned-income HLV. Children appear on the map as people like anyone else, and the goal action is offered next to every living person, but saving a named goal still requires the per-save adult confirmation in the calculator.
Excluded or Hidden Records
Locked, inactive, historical, deleted, missing, and stale records without current values are excluded from totals and geometry. A locked policy can still appear as a redacted linked record so viewers know a hidden record exists.
Read the source badge on every value. Actual values come from recorded policy data, Modeled values come from saved HLV scenarios, and Planned values come from household-selected goals.