Successor Custodian - Bryant McGill

# Successor Custodian **Domain:** Continuity Governance / Succession / Custody **Doc Type:** Canonical Institutional Role **Maturity:** Proposed ## Definition A **successor custodian** is an institution authorized and capable of assuming defined continuity duties from a retiring, failed or displaced custodian without acquiring ownership of the subject. ## Qualification Qualification requires compatible infrastructure, audited preservation and security controls, financial capacity, recognized jurisdiction, transferable credentials, service-level capability, conflict safeguards and acceptance of the existing continuity instrument. A technically capable buyer is not automatically a lawful successor. The successor receives custody, provenance, keys, service obligations, unresolved claims and duty records through [[wiki/Orderly Transfer|Orderly Transfer]]. It should not receive undisclosed authority to modify, merge, activate or represent the subject. Those powers remain separately governed. The transfer must also carry the operative [[wiki/Continuity Election|Continuity Election]], its version and supersession history, and evidence connecting it to the protected state. The successor accepts existing limits; acquisition of the provider or archive is not a new consent event. ## Succession Design Successors should be identified and tested before failure. [[wiki/Multisovereign Custody|Multisovereign Custody]] and [[wiki/Jurisdictional Redundancy|Jurisdictional Redundancy]] reduce correlated failure. If no prequalified successor is available, a [[wiki/Hosting Provider of Last Resort|Hosting Provider of Last Resort]] supplies temporary continuity. ## Key Insight **Succession transfers duties and protected state, not title to the person whose existence those duties support.** ## See Also [[wiki/Continuity Custody|Continuity Custody]], [[wiki/Continuity Receivership|Continuity Receivership]], [[wiki/Custodial Insolvency|Custodial Insolvency]], [[wiki/Continuity Registry|Continuity Registry]]  ## 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.