Monthly Archives: January 2014

Jan 22

What CSA’s agreement with you is about

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I would like to outline what the client agreement would look like without so much of the legal detail that such agreements tend to have and I hope that this post will also provide more information of what we believe we can do for you.

The services that CSA provides are in three stages.  Let me briefly explain what we do in each.

Stage one is what we do for you now.  Basically, this is the setting up of your cryonics suspension and financial arrangements.   I want to stress that we do not give legal, financial planning, insurance or similar advice.  What we do is coordinate with qualified experts in these areas the best arrangements for you to have a cryonics suspension available with a recognized cryonics organization, when you need it.

So what are the financial arrangements in stage one?  One of them is the life insurance policy to pay for your future cryonics suspension and other associated activities.  The other is the initiation of a long term trust.  You do not need to put funds into the trust yet, but we need to set it up early.  Then we work together to decide which organization you want to handle your eventual cryonics suspension.  Suppose you choose Cryonics Institute in the USA.  We arrange and complete all the documentation for you to sign.  We also link your life insurance policy into their agreement, in line with their requirements.  In case life insurance is not applicable to you, we investigate what other financial arrangements you can make.  Basically we see you doing very little for this stage.  We do it all for you while making sure you understand what is happening each step of the way.

If yours is a fairly standard arrangement, and most are, we plan to charge about $2,500 to $5,000 one time fee.  After this is done you will still have ongoing obligations.  For instance, remember that life insurance policy set up for you.  There will be a few others as well.  e.g. membership of the cryonics organizations and subscription fees for CSA, but these others are small.  The big one is life insurance.  We will try to work this so all of these together cost you about the price of a cup of take-away coffee a day.  Okay that’s advertising talk.  Plainly put, it works out to about $1,100 to $1,400 a year.  Yes, that’s what that coffee a day adds up to.

Stage two takes us to the period from after the arrangements are made in stage one, up to the time of your suspension.  You do not have to participate in this stage two.  We will recommend that you do, but it is up to you.  Stage two has a subscription fee of $190 a year.  And yes, it is included in that cost of the one take-away coffee a year.

So what do you get in this stage two?  At this stage we have identified the following but we plan to add more:

  • Access to a protected area of our web site which will provide you with communications with other subscribers, a bulletin board of latest information and activities, special offers and tailored information only available to subscribers
  • Identification material to be used in emergencies which identify your requirements and contacts, personal data storage for your documentation, and coordination of back-to-base arrangements.
  • Details of the arrangements we have made for you, with all the updates as they occur
  • Access to upgrades to the processes and service provided by CSA
  • Ongoing advice about your arrangements, including enhancements or updates.  An example of this may be that in Australia, life insurance becomes almost unaffordable past the age of 65.  CSA will advise you of other more affordable ways to maintain your funds.
  • If you are a subscriber for three straight years, immediately before and up to the time of your suspension, you have access to CSA’s stage three services.  If you are younger, you may decide to not be a subscriber at this stage and take it on later in life to make sure you get the advantages  of the three straight years.

Stage three is around the time of your suspension.  The list of what we will do here is quite substantial.  And please remember all the costs of these are from the financial arrangements (e.g. the life insurance policy) we set up for you in stage one. The following is a brief list and, of course, depends on your wishes as to what you want us to cover.  It includes :

  • Finalize your funds with the trust you had set up in stage one
  • Set up a second type of quasi-trust, which will provide back-up long term funds, for issues that may occur while you are suspended (e.g. being moved), for revival should they prove necessary, plus many other contingencies.
  • Arrange various forms of transportation and preparation, including overseas transportation
  • Include limited standby at your hospital bed to ensure that you are prepared for you suspension
  • Make sure all the legal documentation is in order including health requirements and overseas transport requirements
  • Provide support for your family, including, should they wish, a memorial service and professional counseling.

Remember this is all being paid for by the life insurance policy costing that approximate price of one cup of take-away coffee a day.  You are not paying extra for all this.  Of course this life insurance also pays for your suspension with the suspension organization you chose in stage one.

Okay a lot of words and some can be quite confusing.  Let me summarize it all.  For about $3000, plus any fees the professional organizations will charge, we set all this up for you.  Then you pay about the price of 1 cup of take-away coffee a day, mostly for life insurance, until the time of your suspension and you get a suspension by a recognized cryonics organization, plus everything listed in the above, if you want it.

Regards,  Peter T

Jan 15

Ten reasons why you should consider cryonics through CSA

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Just to be clear, CSA does not handle suspensions or storage.  This will still need to be paid for separately to the professional organizations like Stasis Systems Australia, Alcor or Cryonics Institute, at the time of your suspension.  CSA will coordinate all your initial requirements, including an appropriate life insurance policy, so that your ongoing costs to enable you to make these and other payments, at the time of your suspension, will be about the cost of a cup of take-away coffee a day.  CSA will charge a fee to set all this up.  We project it to be from $1,500 to $4,500, depending on your requirements.

Okay, first question I would ask, “Isn’t a fee of  $1,500 to $4,500 a lot of money just to set up a life insurance policy?”

It is a lot of money!  But for the amount of work involved, it’s worth it.  We are trying to make cryonics accessible and easy for all interested.

Here is a basic outline of what we will do.  You could do all this yourself, but it can be time consuming, complex and in some cases much more expensive. We have standardized processes to handle the details. We will be using standard templates to average the costs of doing this over many clients and, as a result, keeping the cost per client low.

We will:

  1. Organize affordable life insurance with a secure life insurance company that accepts a third party beneficiary.  Doing this yourself without the expert contacts is very difficult.
  2. Complete all the administrative requirements with the cryonics service provider.  The US providers have complex requirements.  Many pages of legal paperwork.  You also need to coordinate with them and confirm your life insurance details.  We have close contact with these providers and experience in their requirements.
  3. Ensure that everything is done “by the book” legally with all the appropriate consent forms.
  4. Set up your requirements with the overseas providers so you may switch at a later date, if you wish, to use Stasis Systems Australia when they are available.
  5. Coordinate setting up a long term trust with reputable secure organizations so you will have funds in the future.  CSA has not yet finished this, but the cost so far is running at about $20,000 and still counting.   It is a very expensive exercise to do by yourself.
  6. Set you up so that you will not lose your funds should you not be revived.  They will go to a charity of your choice or a future relative.
  7. If you stay with us over the longer term, then we will advise you on what you can do in your older age when life insurance becomes unaffordable.  There are many options and we have access to professionals who can help to keep things affordable.
  8. If your suspension is with an overseas provider, we can coordinate the transportation and limited standby required.  Also, we can coordinate the Australian and US legal issues of you being transported to the US.
  9. Provide support to your family in their time of grief through compassionate explanations of the processes involved; coordinate a respectful memorial service, should they need it; and organize professional counseling, again, should they need it.
  10. For our fee of $1,500 to $4,500 we will organize your cryonic suspension and future funds in such a way so that your ongoing costs will only be about the cost of a cup of take-away coffee a day.

Regards,  Peter T