Somewhere between deciding you want to be preserved and actually being preserved, there is a piece of paper, or rather a screen, that does the quiet but essential work of turning intention into authorization. The biostasis contract is that step. It is easy to treat it as administrative box-ticking, but it is worth understanding what it actually accomplishes, because in an emergency the difference between a wish and a signed, standing instruction is the difference between a team that can act and a team that cannot.
The good news is that this step is genuinely simple. It is completed and signed digitally through your member account online, and it slots in alongside the other documents that, together, make your decision real and actionable. This article explains what the contract establishes, why it matters, and roughly how the signing works, without pretending to know the exact button labels, which can change.
What the contract actually establishes
At its core, the contract does two things. It is the formal legal authorization for your preservation, the document that gives Tomorrow.bio the standing to carry out the procedure when the time comes, and it is the formal expression of your informed consent, your considered, on-the-record statement that you understand what you are choosing and that you choose it.
Those two functions matter because cryonics begins at legal death, a moment when you cannot speak for yourself and when there is no time to negotiate. The contract is how your present self instructs everyone, the standby team, the storage foundation, and where relevant your family and the authorities, on what you want done with the structure that is you. It converts a private intention into a public, advance instruction, which is the only form of intention that survives the moment it is needed.
Why a signature carries so much weight here
In ordinary medicine, consent can be revisited at the bedside. In biostasis it cannot, because the patient is, by definition, beyond the point of speaking. That asymmetry is exactly why the field leans so heavily on documents signed in advance, while you are healthy and unhurried and able to ask every question you like.
This is also why we would rather you sign this thoughtfully than quickly. The same calm, deliberate decision-making that makes biostasis an intrinsically personal decision is what the contract captures and preserves. A signature given freely and with understanding, well before any emergency, is far stronger, legally and ethically, than anything assembled in a rush at the end.
How the digital signing works
Practically, the contract lives inside your member account. After you have begun the sign-up process and are getting started with the member zone, the contract is presented for you to review, complete with the information it needs, and sign electronically. A digital signature here carries the same legal force as ink on paper, with the practical advantages that it is timestamped, securely stored, and retrievable rather than sitting in a drawer somewhere.
The information you provide is the substance the contract needs to be actionable: your identity, your chosen preservation option, and the surrounding details that let the team act correctly on your behalf. You do not have to get every adjacent document perfect in the same sitting; the contract is one piece of a set, and the member zone is designed to walk you through the pieces in order rather than all at once.
Where it sits among your other documents
The contract is necessary, but it is not sufficient on its own, and it is honest to say so. It works as part of a small portfolio of important documents to keep, each covering a different failure mode.
- The contract authorizes the preservation and records your consent.
- An advance directive and the broader work of ensuring your wishes are followed help make sure those wishes are respected by clinicians and family in the surrounding medical and legal process.
- Your funding, typically arranged by setting up a funding method such as life insurance, makes sure the preservation is actually paid for rather than merely authorized.
Each piece guards against a different way things could go wrong: authorization without funding stalls, funding without authorization has no standing, and either without an advance directive can be undermined in the surrounding process. The contract is the keystone that says yes, do this, and the others make sure that yes can be carried out.
The contract is the moment your intention stops being a private wish and becomes a standing, signed instruction that a team can act on when you no longer can.
That is the whole reason this step exists, and the whole reason it is worth doing carefully rather than fast. Sign it when you are clear-headed and have asked your questions, keep it alongside your directive and your funding, and you have done the procedural part of biostasis properly. The screen is undramatic. What it authorizes is not.