I have been asked to take over as keyholder

A handover has two consents and two clocks

Changing keyholder is a server handoff, not a swap either person can make alone. It needs the user who asked for it, the keyholder who currently holds the key, and you.

The first clock is the approval window: 24 hours from the request for the answers to arrive. If a required answer does not come in time, the request expires on its own and the current keyholder stays in place.

The second clock is the takeover delay: once both sides have approved, a further 24 hours run before you are the keyholder of record. Until that moment arrives, the current keyholder still holds everything, including the power to keep the lock on an exit request.

Early exit is frozen for the whole of both clocks. A request cannot be opened during a handover, and one that was already open cannot resolve by silence while it runs. On top of that, the moment a change is requested a floor is written on the user's account: no early exit can complete sooner than fourteen days from then, no matter who ends up holding the key. Chained changes only push that date later; nothing resets it.

What you are being asked, exactly

What reaches you depends on where you already stand.

If you are new to their circle, you get a takeover link and the accept flow is the ordinary keyholder accept: read what the role is, give an email address, and confirm the six digit code sent to it. Your card exists from that moment but carries nothing about them yet. Its role row says what the role would be, and its About row says the card will mirror their protection once you take over. That is deliberate: until the handover lands, none of their facts are yours to hold.

If you are already a witness in their circle, you are asked to consent to being promoted, on the same kind of page the outgoing keyholder answers. Your card keeps reporting what a witness card reports until the takeover, and gains the key at the same instant everyone else does.

When the takeover completes, your key and your pass are emailed to you. If you already had a card, its credential is rotated in the same moment, so the new card replaces the old one rather than sitting beside it.

What the outgoing keyholder sees

If you are the one being asked to hand the key on, the page you get is the mirror of the one above. It names both people, states that nothing changes unless you approve and the successor approves too within a day, and gives three rows: what approving means, that the lock does not move, and what happens if you do nothing.

Approving is not a resignation you can take back once it lands. Declining is the second control on the same page, worded as keeping the key, and it ends the change with you still holding it. Doing nothing has the same outcome as declining, because the request lapses after its 24 hours.

Your card follows the process. While a change is running it can read Handover, which means your successor is waiting and you keep full authority until it takes effect. When it completes, your card reads Handed over, keeps that word for seven days, and then stops answering.

What this does not do

Taking over does not give you anything the previous keyholder did not have. You approve or decline an early exit, and nothing else. You cannot unlock their phone, shorten a wait, change their term, or see anything beyond the eleven facts every keyholder is shown.

A handover also does not shorten anything for the person you are taking over from. The fourteen day floor written when the change was requested outlives the handover itself, so the first exit request after a change is slower than one before it, not faster.

If a handover is cancelled, ends with the term, or lapses at its window, everyone who was asked is told that it ended and that nothing changed. Nobody is left waiting on a silence.