Inheritance planning

Principles

• Write for a smart person who has never used bitcoin.
• Name a trusted technical helper your heirs can call.
• Spread knowledge so no single person can spend alone today.
• Multisig makes this easier: no single location reveals everything.

Steps

1. Inventory wallets (single-sig or multisig), devices, backup locations described in general terms, whether a passphrase exists and where it is kept, exchange accounts, and descriptor locations.
2. Choose beneficiaries, an executor and an optional technical helper.
3. Fill in a letter of instruction (template in our checklists). Store it with your estate documents and tell your executor where it is.
4. Ask an estate attorney how to reference digital assets in a will or trust without exposing secrets. Wills can become public records, and laws vary by jurisdiction.
5. Decide how heirs will learn a passphrase, if you use one, and keep it apart from the seed.
6. Rehearse with a separate test wallet holding a tiny amount, never your real backups.
7. Review yearly and after any change, such as a new wallet or a migration after a vendor advisory.

Never write seed words or passphrases in a will, the letter of instruction, or any document stored online.