Your grandmother has one birth certificate. Four grandchildren applying separately order it four times, wait four times, and pay for it four times. One family case orders it once.
The Family Plan
They made the crossing once.
You don't have to make the way back alone.
One ancestor anchors the case. One set of records serves everyone who descends from them. Your whole family submits in the same wave — instead of four people separately solving the same puzzle, ordering the same certificates, and getting four different answers.
How a family case works
One ancestor. One set of records. One wave.
Every program we support works this way — the shared spine of your family's claim is built once.
Everyone descending from the same ancestor needs the same records for the shared generations. Only the last leg differs.
Every record has a named owner and a date, so nobody duplicates work and nobody assumes someone else has it handled.
Invited adults can join the shared family work without a countdown. Each can activate Heritage Passport for their own case when they are ready.
The Family Progress Dashboard
Your family sees your progress. Never your documents.
It stays for the life of your case, and it is enforced on the server — not hidden in the interface.
Visible
Your family can see
- Your name
- Your status
- Your expected dates
- Shared costs
Never visible
Your family can never see
- Your document images
- Your ID numbers
- Your date of birth
- Your personal costs
- Your private notes
An optional add-on
The guided family start
Everything above is the Family Plan, and every family gets it. This is the separate, structured sprint for families who want to move together on a schedule.
Booked by your Family Lead from real availability, on or after your Family Start Date. The agenda comes from your family's actual case state, not a template. By the end of it, every record has a named owner and a date. Recorded and transcribed, so anyone who misses it isn't lost. A planning session, not a sales call.
A structured plan is authored for 31 of our programs — each one written for how that country actually works. A plan runs one to four weeks depending on the program, and it starts at your Family Start Date after the family is ready to begin.
Start correctly.
Kickoff call held. Roster snapshotted. Every member mapped to the anchor ancestor, with their first actions visible.
Build the Shared Record Plan.
Tree finished, qualifying line confirmed, certified-copy counts calculated, record owners assigned. Shared and personal records cleanly separated.
Put everything in motion.
Anchor records and personal record lists ordered. “Waiting on authority” is the goal state — it means everything that could be started has been.
Assemble and submit.
Your packet assembled, checked, and submitted the way your program requires — some governments accept an application before the records arrive, others want every document in hand first.
One program carries a dated commitment: Ireland's Foreign Births Register. Ireland's online application accepts submission before original documents are in hand, which is what makes a fixed 30-day sequence possible there. Every other program is document-complete-then-submit, so its plan carries no fixed submission deadline — and we don't pretend otherwise.
What the guided family start costs
Free at four paid members. $250 for a smaller family.
Purchased once by the Family Lead for the whole family — never per person. Which produces the strangest true fact in our pricing:
The inversion
- 3 × $100 = $300
- + $250 guided start
- 4 × $100 = $400
- Guided start included
Four costs less than three.
The fourth member doesn't get a discount. They remove a charge. For everybody.
A guided start already purchased stands — a later joiner doesn't trigger a credit or adjustment for anyone already enrolled.