A portable, self-verifying proof of a power of attorney — owned by the client, issued and maintained by the firm, and confirmable by anyone, without a phone call.
A Certificate of Fiduciary Authority turns a power of attorney into a secure digital record that states who is authorized to act, on what scope, and whether the authority is still in force. The client owns it. The firm issues and maintains it. And anyone who needs to rely on it can confirm, on the spot, that it’s genuine and not revoked — without calling the firm.
And it carries authority through its whole life: it can pass cleanly to a successor on incapacity or death, and it can reach the self-custodied digital assets a custodian could never be served for. It proves who is authorized; it never holds the client’s assets or keys, and it accompanies the executed instrument rather than replacing it.
The firm generates its signing key in its own browser and records an identity on the public ledger. That identity is the trust root: a forger can’t recreate it, so a forged certificate can’t pass.
A one-click invitation sends each of them a short guide and a link. They create their own FreeholdIP identity in about two minutes — their keys stay with them — and reply with their identity name.
The attorney fills in the scope, effective condition (immediate or springing on incapacity), jurisdiction, and limitations — optionally naming co-agents and successor agents with an exercise rule (acting singly, jointly, or by an M-of-N threshold) — and attaches the executed power of attorney, whose fingerprint is sealed in. It’s signed in the attorney’s browser with the firm’s key.
The client and agent get a verify link, a QR code, and a copy they can download — and can save all of their records as a single file to keep on a phone or computer.
A verifier pastes the ID or scans the QR. Their browser checks the firm’s signature against the firm’s identity on the public record and reads the live status — confirming it’s genuine and in force. No account, no call to the firm.
The firm can revoke, renew, suspend, or re-scope the mandate at any moment. The change is instant for anyone who checks — and “revoked stays revoked.”
Because the record carries its own proof, it keeps verifying — offline, by math — from the saved copy and the public ledger, even if the firm, or FreeholdIP itself, someday is gone.
The hardest moment for any power of attorney is the handoff — on incapacity, on death, when the primary agent can no longer serve. The certificate carries that handoff provably, on a clean, timestamped record of who held authority and when it changed.
A statute can compel a custodian — a bank, a broker — to disclose. It has nothing to compel for self-custodied assets: a hardware wallet, a domain, a cloud root, a password vault. There is no clerk to serve. This is where the certificate goes where nothing else can.
The links below show a live, end-to-end example issued by a fictional demonstration firm, Harlowe Estate Law — through the full lifecycle, prove to operate.
FreeholdIP is a working system — the full lifecycle above, prove through operate, is live in the demonstration. The legal framing — that this is a tool a professional uses, not legal advice and not custody — is documented in a role/UPL analysis and a security statement available for a firm’s carrier and IT review. The underlying mechanism is the subject of a filed patent. Institutional acceptance is a journey: what works today is the proof of authenticity and status, the clean transition and audit record, and the digital-asset cases where nothing better exists. It is offered as software and coordination — it proves who is authorized, and it pairs with, never replaces, the executed instrument and the institutions that hold the assets.