Bitcoin Forum

What happens if i amass a fortune in bitcoins and i die. Who will guarantee my fortune is divided among those in my Will?

Who would you trust with your private keys?

obviously multisig it. where each inheritor only has 1 key.. that you give them today and the executor of the Will has a key also.
where only at the execution of the will, would all participants collectively combine the keys to send the funds out

That depends on who you have shared the private keys with.If you have cold storage's which are untouched and only you have access to them,then nothing could be done.They will be untouched.Hopefully in near future ,some one will come up with bitcoin Life Insurance polices.

Do you really don't trust anyone ? In that case why would you care for who the money goes ?
I'd personally give them to any of my family members and I would trust them (It doesn't matter how much the amount is) without the need of making multi signature wallet or anything .

I will never trust any one with my private keys, even not with multisig. My coins will remain unused in their wallets for ever if something happens with me. That's how I think about it right now. It might change when I become a father, then I will try to find a way to make sure at some point in the future my kids can access the coins.

For any paper wallet i own, and assuming the price was to go through the roof and they were actually worth anything then my significant other would just have to work out for herself how to get them off of their. If they actually did go up to a decent price im pretty sure she would work up the motivation to figure out how to get those bad boys off of their and into her account in no time.

you should trust your family, before anyone else in this case, otherwise it is pointless to even think about it

or simply do a fovor to everybody else and leave them there so all the other coins will have a better value

yep, if you dont trust your family then they dont deserve the inheritance.. you might aswell give one key to a charity and pt the other key into a will and the funds move only when the will is read out as thats the only time to two parties come together

what if they lose it, or die also.

Using mutisignature might solve this problem. 5 keys are given to the 5 inheritors, but only 3 keys are need to unlock.

I feel this all depends on who is going to inherit if it was family I would probably try to set something up with them before something happened however we never know what is round the corner I feel most of us need to have a plan for the future of our bitcoin but as said who do you trust your keys to

surely is, however people who are evilness could spend the coins from the legacy. (that's why you are not recommended to use multisig share your wallet to others you don't trust as an insurance if you are dead)
we are never knowing what would happen after we are dead, go without any worries.
you should either donate your coins to needy's or trust your family. :)

For me, i will write it on a piece of paper with all the instructions on how to recover the coins and then put it on a safety deposit box. and only my inheritor will have the access in case i accidentally tip on the rock and  hit my head ::)

It is like all the other wealth which are executed by a notary, trust person or legal person. The probabilities to be stolen are exactly the same. So better to find a girlfriend and leave all the data to her. Or if not possible or desirable this way, to find ten notary and leave all the keys to all of them. Then announce this your decision publicly as well as even all the amount of your bitcoins. Or if not to declare publicly all the amount find other ten notary and put only the amount in a security box in a bank and give the keys of this safety box to all of them. Order the bank to not open this security box if were not all the ten together in the day of the opening (excluding the case of the death of someone of them). So, in others words, complicate at maximum the procedure that needed to steal your coins and the probabilities to not be stolen will be reduced at minimum.

I think, this issue depends on your own. If you want to issue this difficult then later settlement was also very difficult and so otherwise.

If you want this problem easily, I have a solution that is:

provide a key to the heir of the Bitcoin can really hold the belief and honestly, after that you addressed to the person to give the keys to the family or the heir of the Bitcoin.

Then all the problems will be over. or you give a petition to your family and you addressed to all families "that the petition should only be opened when you die '

I would like do the same but if your family members aren't familiar with bitcoin then..?

MultiSig. That's simply the best option to give several persons a unique part of the key as franky1 suggested. I wouldn't trust 1 person to hold my private key, but I can see myself giving a few people to hold a part of them. Without all parts there is no way you can unlock the funds.

If you think one person deserves all your bitcoins, that makes things easy.  :)
Give them access to your private key (if you trust them when you are alive as well)

I did not submit my password to anyone, I just keep it for personal, I always exchange bitcoin me every month or if the price was suitable in my mind, I was just using bitcoin as a tool to supplement my income and I only save money on local banks, but if you need the confidence of people choose someone in your family  :)

That's something I've been thinking about too.
I think I would just make a document with all my accounts and passwords on and list all of my assets on there, including bitcoins and altcoins.
Everything would be handwritten and kept somewhere only my family and partner know.

Frankie is an amatuer and their is strong evidence of his links to malicious groups by his actions,

don't listen to him!!!

My coins will be remain stored for forever at this moment it is really hard for me to trust at anyone if die today but maybe tomorrow i will change my mind and would like to share about cold storage with my girl ;)

I have got all my wallet address in a folder which is stored in a pendrive and i have everthing written in a paper and all documents are stored in a safe, which only my wife knows about it, so if anything happens to me she will be the next person to touch it. if my son become elder then he will get all the access. because i am doing this to them only if they dont know it then what is the use of this assets.

I do think that the people behind the bitcoin trading have had this as a concern and very sure that there is plan in place that will make things right. Just like banks do, I am sure that there is a department that is set aside to do such like cases. Please do not e afraid of the investment, just  make sure that every information you have put on your profile is correct so that we give the people who handle them an easy time when we are no more. It is always a concern for everyone who invests.

With the current state bitcoin is in, would you trust those inheritors to keep the keys safe all that time?

Big chance that anyone not fully into bitcoin will have long forgotten the key by the time they inherit your bitcoins.

Here is my idea. Ill get a safety deposit box at several banks. Have the banks set my inheritors to all my family members. Then ill place cold storage offline wallets in each of the safety deposit boxes, along with my bars of gold, silver, platinum, and various artifacts. Then I will also leave a DVD video they can watch with me expalining to them how to take the coins out and sell them and instructing them how to divide the money amongst eachother.

How does that sound to you?

paper wallet them all and put them in a deposit box.

Give the key to your lawyer with instructions. That is what I
would do if I had tons of bitcoin. For the couple bitcoins I have
now I will be taking them with me cause no one knows my info
lol.

There was a topic about this subject a year ago already. Makes me think my situation hasn't changed. If I die tomorrow, my BTC are lost forever. The only people I trust enough to share my wallet with are not computer-savvy and they told me several times I should stay out of BTC. So unless I meet some new people who I could trust and who are interested, nothing will change.

My BTC would just add to the ever growing sum of lost BTC.

I would print out my will, make it definitive who will receive the Bitcoin, and to prevent any security breaches or anything from the requirement of writing down the private address, I would write it out by hand, if there was enough Bitcoin to leave behind to make it worthwhile.

wow that was such a clever answer, would have never thought of that

If you did not give your private keys to anyone, these bitcoin will be gone forever. That is why I told my brother where I stored my priv keys and I taught him how could he spend them.

The easiest way would have to be writing out exactly what to do in the will. Where your private key / passwords are.

Or if close to death just tell someone what to do or give them access to your wallet.

You could explain to your family (parents / brother) or your wife how redeem your btc in case of death, maybe with a sort of message that they can open only when you leave earth.

If there was more trusted site for saving btc I think you could easily store your funds there and then give only the access, all problem are solved.

You need to write a legal contract and designate individuals who you want to give your private keys too. If you do have bitcoins, you should specifiy who you are leaving your bitcoins to. Don't treat bitcoin anything differently then leaving someone your house. Go to a lawyer, get a notarized document and state what will happen with your bitcoins. To lose bitcoins or not give them because you didn't properly maintain them is ridiculous.
*This will take effort on your part. Get ready for a legal battle among your surviving kin if you don't designate who and what you are giving to them.
Not something to think about after dying and that your family is fighting for all your belongings.

Ps. you could just write I am leaving "this" property to "this individual. But you really should have something officially written up so it official and can't be argued in court by the individuals who you wish to leave no property to.

*Place this in a safety deposit box and make sure you safely store it. A written contract by a lawyer is not arguable in court. You write a contract and sign the terms, you have to abide by the terms legally on what you signed on. No lawyer would ever try to argue a contract that was signed legally and consciously.

this is agood post, and of course, important for those who have bitcoin in large numbers, and they feel the need mewarsikan or entrust their bitcoin account, but I do not feel the need to do so at this time, because I still do not have enough bitcoin.

You could sign a legal contract which involves a lawyer and everything.
Getting a lawyer and setting all that up seems more of a legitimate way to go in this case.

Well for now my family don't use bitcoin even I am going to give them I don't think they will know how to use it.
I think if I have children I will just teach them and give them i I die. I don't really care who to trust with my key I am dead after all.

Just introduce a family member to bitcoin and get them enthusiastic could also massively reduce the risk

Just tell them instructions on how to get access to the private keys and the first problem is solved.

Ofcourse, there is a slight risk of theft this way and hiding from the other inheritors.

If I ever get to that point where I own so many bitcoins, I will get myself a lawyer and set up contracts. That's the best way to go I think. Getting a lawyer is one of the best things to do to prevent issues within the family as to who gets what and how much.

I don't want to intrude in private matters but it should change the day you become a husband. So before you become a father. Important to think about what you'll let to your partner if anything shall happen to you.

Why not just create paper wallets or even just get your private keys on a regular usb stick and dump them in a safe deposit box? Or you can just tell the person you trust the most about it right now, why wait till you're dead to have a stranger explain it to her/him?

I have the mrs know how to access my bitcoin should i die.  I will be more concerned about this as the price goes up but yeah its a great topic.

If you set up your will to give away your bitcoins it could happen.

But you would need a privet key set up for each person.

Probably be much better easier opitions in 5-10 years which the newbie can follow.  Something to think about meantime is all the people who die and dont set up a proper bitcoin will would pump the price.

Life is uncertain so i have already given my private keys in printed form to my family where i store most of the coins and my brother also have access to my online wallet. So there will be no problem if i leave this world. UFF no dying sounds so much scary  :o

I'm not old enough to think about a will right now. Obviously if I die in a freak accident then that's just unlucky & most likely my bitcoin's will be lost/unrecoverable.

I've showed my girlfriend what to do & how to get access to my coins but she isn't really interested & probably wouldn't know what to do any way.

You can't guarantee that one of the key holders will coerce the rest of the holders to give them to them because he happens to have more power/money than the others and whatnot. There will always be problems with inheritances, but this happens with fiat as well.

It will be real problem if i get died in near future. I haven't thought this before but i am yet to earn something significant amount of bitcoin so i will not make some will or something. But i will try to print paper wallet and give it to my family if i want to store big. I constantly cashed out my coin so this will not be a big problem.

Hmm I think for me I will just convert it to fiat money if I am old.
So that I can give to my children so that they can use it.
I doubt that I just can give my password for some one.

Maybe get your private keys tattooed on your ass. Tell your loved one's there's a bitcoin gift on your butt. Nobody else is going to want to look there and steal your coins any way  8) ;D

Keep the private key in a bank vault with permission for the administrator of your will access to it if you kick the bucket I suppose

I would trust only my closest family, but things chance very quickly with family too... in the end "blood is thicker than water" ...you need to trust at least one family member.

I would use two safe deposit boxes and store multiple keys in both boxes and give the keys to these boxes to different people. If something happens with one of the parties,

there are a duplicate box, with another set of keys and instructions.  ???

That's a good question!

I guess that anyone that has a lot of coins in a holding Bag already thought about that.

In my case I would trust my daughter to have my keys.

But now that you mention it, this is a situation that needs trusted services and businesses to handle it. I'm sure that the blockchain tech will give birth to a business that can fulfil this demand!

Give it another few years and your wallet will be linked to your heartbeat. As soon as you cark it your coins will go to predetermined addresses. Job done.

I think it is a good idea if there is no false alarm. If the heart beat sensor malfunctioned, and send the coins too early, you will have nothing left.

Imagine having Robert Langdon of Angels and Demons saw a private key in a discreet manner after Louvre curator died, that would've been cooler I suppose :)

If you save your bitcoin, your son will suddenly become a very rich man, of course, you have to tell him that you know all of them. :P

Bitcoin is anonymous, how can they know how are you going divide your bitcoin, unless you writing your will before you die

but if you asked me, i think you should give the private key to your family member

I didn't even think about this before i was reading this thread...
My wife has a copy of my Keepass database containing all accounts for all online sources that owe me money, it might be a good idear to put my electrum seed in there to.

haha, yep. I thought about that too. You can't rely on medical devices complitely, they might fail the very inappropriate moment.

Give your private keys to your wife if you have one, or give them to a family member you love the most.

intressting i got the same question was laying awake last night in bed and this question popped into my head , i have most of my btc on coinbase maybe i can ask them to set something up? otherwise i just give them all my passwords mail phone and everything and they just setupt their own btcwallet and transfer my money there i guess.

Well here's something you can do, assuming they know how to use bitcoins in the first place.

Make paper wallets for each one and give them the decryption password for it. And when you die they can use the bitcoins if they remember the passphrase and they can't take the bitcoins which was meant for the other member as they wouldn't be able to decrypt it.

Print the paper wallets in their name, keep them safe for you wouldn't want them to spend it while you're still alive and when you die they can use it with their passwords.

They may not find the paper wallet when you die. It is better to use a mutisignature system to execute the will.

No one will touch it if you they don't got the keys to your wallet.
I think in the future there will be someone that will creates something for it.

The worst part was if you die, and nobody has a way to get your coins. Lost forever.

Well, if you told someone about the ID, then your money is safe.

Well, using Multisig is useful too.

Bitcoin is the first social experiment where every one must agree with all the part of bitcoin ecosystem to change anything in it without a central governance like any other altocoin like ehtereum, litecoin etc.
If bitcoin failed then the experiment will failed. Is so simple.

I would imagine that in your will that your attorney holds in a safe you would leave exacting instructions how to recover the private key.  For example the will could hold the password for a master key to unlock your other passwords, or have the missing link in a mutisignature system (ie your family has a section, and the will has a section too).

Should you be using a Paper Wallet or even a Brain Wallet things may get more complicated.

You could also hide the RF from a physical (bit) coin inside a tooth (if you are paranoid that is)

Are you sure you wish to die Y/N ?

This sounds very easy but it is very difficult to decide who someone can have such high level of trust on because if we are talking about centralized financial system the bank will ask some security question before withdrawal. It is advisable to keep it with your wife.