Part II — The life the design leaves alone
14. Holding a Role in Somebody's Life
Helping somebody does not make them yours to decide for. This chapter separates care from authority, a chosen supporter from a substitute decision, and a person's own voice from the record made about it. The hardest case is the person with nobody recorded as acting for them: assistance must begin without turning their need into a status of incapacity.
What kinship does not create
Care is not a family invoice. Public responsibility for care continuity is immediate and cannot be delegated away by naming a parent, partner, child, or other relative. A caregiver and a dependant each keep a separate floor, privacy, voice, exit, and remedy. No adult inherits a compulsory personal-care duty or support debt merely through kinship. A record of care as employment identifies an activity. It does not prove that care reached another person, that the care was safe, that anyone consented, or that the worker acquired authority over them.
Each role has its own limits
Parentage, caregiving, household membership, material support, property and succession, and decision agency have distinct records. One does not confer the others. Authority associated with a role is a challengeable fiduciary power for a named decision, never ownership of a person. Marriage or household membership alone cannot supply it. Each caregiver and dependant retains separate standing, voice, privacy, confidential help and exit.
The person must be heard
The person must be heard without a minimum speaking age. The participation record carries their own account without certifying a preference or relationship. Independent assistance is required where the adults' interests conflict. Authority grows decision by decision rather than arriving as a score for a whole person. The participation record must match the exact role it concerns, so a role reviewed for one decision domain licenses nothing in another.
Support assists; it does not replace
A supporter is chosen, can be changed and can be refused, and no substituted decision may be made while support can still be given. Plenary guardianship and status-based incapacity are refused, and so is any global capability score. Where will and preferences genuinely remain unascertainable after support was actually provided — and the record has to carry positive evidence that it was — a bounded route opens: conflict-free, decision-specific, least-restrictive, time-bounded, independently reviewed before and during, and ending when preferences become ascertainable. Take the support-first evidence out of the record and the route does not derive. The last resort cannot be reached by skipping the step before it.
Care continuity needs nobody to hold a role
Public responsibility for care continuity is immediate and non-delegable. Its reviewed record can complete with no family role present: a family, household, association or charity is not presumed to provide the floor. The duty does not wait for a chosen supporter. Respite, exit and relocation must preserve care rather than making a relationship the price of receiving it.
The formal continuity conclusion still needs its own supplied premises. Absence of a family does not manufacture that record or establish that care arrived. The ordinary case tests independence from a family role, not automatic performance of the duty.
Reproductive and bodily care, and the order of a treatment decision
Reproductive and bodily care needs no third party's authorisation. Current informed choice controls, including refusal. These records supply no route from that choice to punishment or an adverse finding about the person. For treatment more broadly the order is fixed: the current choice, then a valid advance directive on its own terms, then a chosen representative implementing known will and preferences, and only then the bounded route. Age, a diagnosis and place of residence do not themselves supply authority to override that choice.
Your own origin record
Birth, adoption, donor and gestational-origin records must be kept accurately, and the person the record is about can reach and correct their own. That access carries no automatic contact or relationship right in either direction, and a correction does not erase the lawful history.
When one of these records is defective
An independent defect finding withdraws exactly what it names and creates duties to correct and publish the correction. A request for review does not need the acting body's permission, and a certified failure to answer moves the duty to an independent alternate.
When nobody holds a role at all
The independent rights advocate owes every person a duty to initiate assistance and representation without a request. A reviewed appointment specifies how that duty is to be carried out in a particular matter.
It must identify a recognised trigger: nobody is recorded as acting for the person; the sole supporter is accused of failing them; accessible contact is unavailable; the person is held or placed without representation; or an earlier appointment ended without a successor. An invented trigger completes nothing.
The appointment names a representative for that matter, not a guardian over the person's life. It preserves their voice, makes no capability finding, creates no reusable classification and enrols them in nothing. Its information is limited to what the matter needs. A source-bound end prevents silent renewal, and gaps in representation suspend neither care continuity nor the floor.
It also names a receipt witness. The positive case derives the acting body's duty to authorise that witness, but no witness authority follows automatically. The representative owes action within the appointed matter; the challenge reader owes a hearing and correction. The case derives neither personhood for the participant nor parentage authority for the representative. Appointment, witness authority and authority over the person are separate conclusions.
Separately authorised source, evidence and review attesters must agree on the fields. The representative cannot be the acting body, reviewer, challenge reader, alternate or affected person. A conflicting authorised entry on a single-valued field blocks completion. An independent alternate supports the challenge route. These conditions establish a reviewed appointment record, not that an advocate exists, a representative acted or a witness saw delivery.
Adulthood and missing evidence
Cira is a person and is owed the floor. The record supplies no evidence in the required form that Cira has reached the common adulthood threshold, so it derives no ballot. That does not establish Cira's age. It cannot distinguish not yet adult from adult with missing evidence: the model has no outside clock.
In the law, reaching the common age creates general adulthood automatically; registration is evidence, never its source. Early decision-specific authority can cover a named choice without conferring general adulthood or a ballot. The executable model still needs supplied age evidence to derive its ordinary franchise conclusion.
Esa illustrates the gap. Teaching, having been examined and being somebody's recorded child prove no age. Esa's teaching remains recorded, but no adulthood entry supports a ballot conclusion. That absence does not turn Esa into a child.
Esa can challenge the missing or disputed age evidence. The challenge creates a named dispute and a duty of independent determination and correction; it does not decide the age or supply the missing entry. The last uncontested adult status also continues, and a separate provisional opportunity is available where credible evidence indicates the common threshold may have been crossed and a ballot or candidacy would otherwise expire. Positive evidence is required; neither missing evidence nor review silence counts as approval.
The distinction from disenfranchisement is legal as well as formal. Withholding an already held franchise as punishment differs from a threshold not yet reached. Missing evidence can nevertheless prevent an executable conclusion about an entitlement already held in law. A challenge and provisional route address that failure without proving anyone's birthday, making a reviewer act or delivering a ballot. The later chapter on the vote follows those routes.
The child with nobody
Nell's one-entry record identifies no family, supporter or appointment. The public care duties remain, kinship supplies no compulsory personal-care debt, and family absence authorises no confinement. The rights advocate's initiation duty derives without a request.
No appointment completes for Nell. The positive case above shows what the route requires; it does not appoint anybody for this child. Nor can a substitute decision skip the required evidence of prior support. The record therefore names a duty-bearer without establishing representation, witness authority or delivered care.
What none of this decides
The rules determine no outside best interests, capacity, consent, pregnancy, parentage, age or death. They test supplied grounds for roles and decisions, and preserve rights when the authority is absent, challenged or withdrawn. Service capacity, clinical practice and the operation of family proceedings need evidence and institutions beyond those conclusions.
The boundary is the same through every role: assistance does not confer ownership, and the absence of a private helper does not remove public responsibility. The next chapter takes that boundary across a border.