Nobody can take your Bitcoin without your keys. That's the whole point. But the property that makes self-custody unstoppable while you're alive is exactly what destroys it when you're not: keys can't be subpoenaed, reset, or recovered by anyone but you, including your family.
No inheritance plan, and there are really only three endings:
- The keys are lost. Nobody knew where they were, or how to use them. The coins are unspendable forever. No support line, no reset.
- The seed ends up in the will. A will admitted to probate becomes a public court record in most jurisdictions. Congratulations, your seed phrase is now a document strangers can request, and probate can tie everything up for months.
- The coins were on an exchange. Heirs get told to mail in a death certificate and pass KYC before a custodian decides whether to release your Bitcoin. The entire thing you opted out of, handed back to them at the worst possible time.
Every path ends with someone else controlling your stack.
The fixes are all standard tooling, no trusted third party required:
- 2-of-3 multisig with one key held by an heir (or in a trust). While you're alive it does nothing; at death, your heir + one of your keys sweeps the funds. No court, no custodian.
- On-chain timelock / dead man's switch (miniscript — Liana is the reference). If coins sit unmoved for X months, an heir key becomes spendable. The chain is the executor.
- A revocable trust so the coins never touch probate, and the will never has to mention them.
- A letter of instruction a non-technical heir can actually follow — procedure and locations, never the seed itself.
The one hard rule: never write a seed phrase into anything that can become a public or court document.
I wrote the full playbook: the checklist plus copy-paste trust and executor clauses you can hand your own lawyer, flagged where U.S.-specific so it can be adapted. It's free: https://thebitcoinact.xyz
Genuinely curious what this crowd runs, because most "inheritance" advice is hand-waving: what's your actual setup? Multisig with an heir key? Timelock? A trust? Or is it still "someone I trust knows roughly where the hardware wallet is"?
I don’t care about give my keys for someone that doesn’t care about it. If they want it, they have to know it value to not give them for banks. Otherwise is a waste of my time and energy.
Fair point!