You have recovery documentation. That is not the same as recovery capability.
Documentation describes what should happen. A drill tests what actually happens when the people who would need to execute recovery attempt to do so—without you in the room, without your hints, under conditions that resemble a real stress event.
In custody audits, we see the same pattern repeatedly: holders with thorough, well-intentioned documentation that fails the first time it's used. The spouse can't find the right device. The co-signer doesn't understand which step comes next. The executor gets stuck on terminology. The backup location is ambiguous. The timeline assumes everyone is available at once. None of this shows up when you read the document. It shows up when someone tries to follow it.
Recovery drills matter because they expose the gap between what you wrote and what others can do. That gap is invisible until you run the drill. You assume your instructions are clear. You assume your family members remember what you showed them. You assume the documentation matches the current software and hardware. Drills replace assumption with evidence.
The first drill almost always fails in some way. That's not a criticism of your setup—it's the purpose of the drill. You're not proving that everything works. You're discovering where it doesn't. Each failure mode you find in a controlled drill is one you won't have to discover during incapacity, death, or emergency. You fix the documentation. You clarify the roles. You add the missing step or the photo of the actual device. Then you run the drill again.
Drills also validate availability. Your 2-of-3 multisig assumes two signers can coordinate. Have you ever simulated a scenario where one of them is traveling, or ill, or unreachable? If your architecture depends on people being available, you need to test whether they actually are when it matters. Drills surface dependency on a single person's schedule, location, or willingness—before that dependency becomes a single point of failure.
Professional custody validation includes recovery drills with your actual participants as a non-negotiable phase. Not a theoretical walkthrough. Not a read-through of the document. An actual attempt to execute recovery, observed, with revisions and re-testing until it succeeds. Documentation alone does not guarantee recoverability. Drills do.