Discussion draft · 14 October 2026 · events describing the legal status of a person and the authority others hold over their affairs
This catalog summarizes all candidate DADE event types so they can be reviewed together. DADE events describe who may act for a person, and on what standing, after that person dies or loses capacity. They are drawn from a survey of 57 jurisdictions across 24 countries, where each underlying claim is cited to primary law with a retrieval date.
Events are organized into four groups. Each event reuses the shared DADE claims
(governing_law, initiating_authority, canonical_role, evidence,
effect_unspecified, supersedes / corrects) in addition to the key claims listed
below.
All event-type URIs use the base https://schemas.openid.net/secevent/dade/event-type/.
For each event's triggers, claims, the statute that requires them, Receiver responses, and an example SET, see the DADE Event Reference.
Status legend — In spec: defined in the DADE 1.0 draft · Candidate: raised for discussion and not specified anywhere.
A Transmitter asserting a DADE event asserts that something happened, not what follows from it in law. This is a requirement, not reticence.
A court appoints a conservator over the property of someone who had granted a power of attorney. Across seven US states that one transition has five different effects on the existing power: in Virginia the agency continues; in West Virginia and Kentucky it terminates; in Missouri the court allocates functions between the two fiduciaries; in Nebraska and Kansas the conservator acquires the principal's own power to revoke it; and in Iowa the power is suspended and later reinstated if the principal regains capacity.
An event asserting "the power of attorney is terminated" is therefore wrong in five of the
seven. One asserting "a conservator was appointed over this principal's property, under the
law of Iowa, as at this date" is right in all of them. Hence governing_law on every
event, and effect_unspecified for a Transmitter that will not characterise the
consequence.
The as_at half of governing_law has its own case. Colorado holds two durability tests in
force at once and selects between them by the age of the instrument: the current default for a
power created after 1 January 2010, and a superseded magic-words section — still live — for one
created before it. So a Receiver needs to know not only whose law applies but as of when, and for
some transitions that date belongs to the instrument rather than to the event.
The two transitions in the person themselves. Both are reversible.
| # | Event type | Status | Subject | What it signals | Key claims | Typical receiver action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | principal-deceased |
In spec | Principal | A death has been recorded — by a registry, a clinician, a court, or a report with none of those behind it | record_status date_of_death death_type proof registry_reference |
Grant nothing; stop inactivity clocks; freeze destructive automation; prepare to evaluate a claim |
| 2 | principal-capacity-changed |
In spec | Principal | A determination about capacity has been made, or has ceased to hold | capacity_status determiner scope finding_date expires_at objection |
Suspend or revive exactly what the governing law attaches to the finding |
Both carry a correction path, and for the same reason: a death record can be withdrawn, and a capacity finding can be reversed on re-examination or expire by statute. The surveyed shelf lives on a capacity determination run from two hours to five years.
The standing of someone acting for the principal.
| # | Event type | Status | Subject | What it signals | Key claims | Typical receiver action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | authority-changed |
In spec | Principal (holder in body) | An authority was granted, registered, suspended, reinstated, re-scoped, devolved or terminated | authority_status holder artefact scope registration_effect revival cause predecessor |
Evaluate against governing_law; act on the conclusion, not the status name |
| 4 | authority-lapse-pending |
Candidate | Principal | An authority is about to end by the running of time, with nobody required to say so | lapses_at cause grace_period preventable_by |
Tell the holder, and the alternate where the authority devolves rather than ends |
Three authority_status values exist because the surveyed law requires them and a
two-state model cannot express them:
suspended / reinstated — an authority may be valid, temporarily ineffective, and
effective again, with nothing issued or withdrawn at either boundary.registered — in ten of the forty-four jurisdictions that record the point, a power must
be registered before
it can be used, so the instrument can exist, be valid, and confer nothing. In one of them
registration is constitutive: the power is not created unless registered.
registration_effect carries the difference.And artefact has the value none, which is not an error: in 16 of the 24 countries
surveyed the heirs hold the estate from the moment of death, with no document issued and
nobody declaring anything. Paired with initiating_authority: operation-of-law, that is
the honest description of the most common succession regime there is.
On
authority-lapse-pending: the open question is whether this is an event at all or a field onauthority-changed. Against: a pending lapse is not a transition, and a Transmitter that knowslapses_atcould have put it on thegrantedevent. For: in the disposition-of-remains case the clock starts on a notification the granting Transmitter has no knowledge of — twenty-four hours from the holder being told of the death, or forty hours from the death, whichever is earlier.
What the principal told a custodian, which is not the same as who they appointed.
| # | Event type | Status | Subject | What it signals | Key claims | Typical receiver action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | direction-recorded |
In spec | Principal | The principal lodged a direction about post-mortem access, or withdrew one | direction_status effect lodged_with designee scope precedence revocable |
Record it and honour it; a forbid needs no corroborating authority |
The effect claim takes permit or forbid, and the prohibiting case is the reason
this is not a variant of authority-changed. In one surveyed jurisdiction a deceased
person's data-protection rights are exercisable by an interested person unless the deceased
forbade it in writing to the controller — and that prohibition binds. An implementation
built for the permitting case silently mis-implements the prohibiting one.
precedence is a bargain rather than a boast: the statutes that let an in-product direction
override a contrary direction in a will do so on condition that the tool permits the
user to modify or delete it at any time, which is why revocable sits beside it.
The exchange at the counter. These are the events a custodian sends.
| # | Event type | Status | Subject | What it signals | Key claims | Typical receiver action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | authority-presented |
Candidate | Principal | A holder presented an authority; statutory response clocks start here | holder artefact asks presented_at response_deadline |
Acknowledge, start the clock, answer within it |
| 7 | authority-accepted |
Candidate | Principal | A custodian accepted an authority and will act on it | holder artefact scope_honoured effective_at conditions |
Open what was accepted and no more |
| 8 | authority-refused |
In spec | Principal | A custodian declined to honour an authority, and states the ground | grounds holder presented_at artefact report_deadline remediable |
Where the Receiver is the issuing authority, treat it as the governing law makes it |
authority-refused travels in the opposite direction to every other event in this
profile, and it exists because at least one legislature already requires it: a person
refusing to accept the authority of a guardian or conservator must, within ten days of the
refusal, report the refusal and its reason to the court that issued the letters of office,
where it is treated as a grievance. A deployment supporting it needs a stream in which the
issuing authority is the Receiver.
Its grounds registry is drawn from statutes that enumerate the grounds on which an
authority may lawfully be refused. Two grounds are expressly prohibited and must never
be sent: a refusal resting exclusively on the age or date of execution of the instrument,
and one resting exclusively on a requirement that a different form of instrument be used.
Privacy note on
authority-presented: it is the one event that carries data identifying a living claimant, and the one least suited to a broadcast stream. It may belong in a bilateral exchange between the holder's service and the custodian rather than in a Shared Signals stream at all.
evidence structures of OpenID Connect for Identity Assurance; this profile defines no
new ones.