# Digital Identity Succession
**Domain:** Digital Afterlife / Identity / Succession
**Doc Type:** Canonical Concept
**Maturity:** Developed
**Evidence / Concept Status:** Proposed continuity architecture with existing identity/estate analogues
## Definition
**Digital Identity Succession** is the controlled transition of authority, credentials, provenance, and recognized identity from a biological person or failing identity system to a successor estate, representative, or continuant.
## Continuity Significance
It prevents identity from becoming stranded when biological credentials are revoked or trust roots change.
## Existing Architecture / Evidence
Estate, executor, registry, and credential-succession mechanisms provide pieces; no general continuant identity succession regime exists.
## Evidentiary Boundary / Red-Team Note
Succession must not automatically declare the successor numerically identical to the source.
## Related Ontology
[[wiki/Durable Identity|Durable Identity]] · [[wiki/Root of Trust Succession|Root of Trust Succession]] · [[wiki/State Lineage|State Lineage]] · [[wiki/Legal Identity After Substrate Transition|Legal Identity After Substrate Transition]]
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## Deep-Time Continuity Interface
This node is audited through [[wiki/Deep Time Continuity|Deep Time Continuity]] for future control-surface conversion, ontological drift, succession, irreversibility, due process, and resource incidence. The backlink records analytical relevance; it does not establish continuity intent in the present rule or institution.
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