Bitcoin Forum

I'm new to this forum, so hello everyone, but I'm here to ask you quite a painful question:

First some background:
I purchased approximately 2 bitcoins in 2017. I first had it stored in Xapo, but since that company caved in, I transferred to Bitcoin.com. In 2021 I sent a half of a my hugely appreciated investment to my ex-wife as a part of the divorce settlement. She got it and could see it for a few years on her phone. The she lost her phone and ... she could not get her investment back in the Bitcoin app anymore. Bitcoin.com is awful: no one to contact there (the 'Speak with support agent' window in their mobile app, i.e. the way they advertise as the way to contact them, results in 'Something's gone wrong. Content could not be loaded').

After I transferred from Xapo to Bitcoin.com I got the list of 12 words that are supposed to be used for the recovery. When my ex-wife got her 1/2, she NEVER got a similar list for her. However, she was able to establish the Bitcoin.com account and see her share of that investment until the phone loss.

Question:
Is the share of her investment gone? Are there anyway to reestablish this ownership?

Thanks a lot.

You have been using Bitcoin.com before your wife and you got the 12 word seed phrase. There is no way the wallet will not generate seed phrase for your wife. Your wife needs the seed phrase to be able to spend the coins. Else, the coins has lost.

According to this: https://github.com/Bitcoin-com

Bitcoin's wallet is based on Copay's fork which as far as I can remember, has always been an HD wallet that provided a seedphrase.

So my guesses (and I could be wrong of course) are:

1. She might have skipped the recovery process (assuming that's doable within the app, some wallets allow you to do that).
2. Hopefully... she might have taken a cloud backup (using iCloud or Google Drive depending on her device) and she could use that to restore her funds.

Now again, I'm just guessing here. I know that the wallet has cloud recovery, but not sure if it was implemented on 2017 or way after that

If she doesn't have that either, then sadly, there's is nothing she can do to recover those funds.

If your wife doesn't have access to the 12-word phrase, then the bitcoin is gone forever as there is no means to access it. 
 
Any wallet that gives a phrase doesn't give it to some and forgets to give it to others, but the thing is, some people might forget to write down or back up the phrase, which will be the reason they claim it was never given to them.
 
And I don't think there is anything that the support can do about this, even if they try and reply to you guys, unless they want to prove that they have access to the wallet, which is not supposed to be a non-custodial wallet. 
 
She is in charge of her own wallet protection, and if she is careless with the phrase, then she loses the holdings entirely.

Support can only 'help' you if you use a custodial wallet. You are using a self custodial wallet and you have control over the wallet through the seed phrase, if you lose your seed phrase and you also don't have access to your wallet file, then i am sorry you may have lost your funds.

The BTC network is decentralized, so everything is more of DIY, i am curious as to why your wife never exchanged her BTC to fiat since she does not understand anything about BTC, if you have BTC and you don't know what you are doing, the chances are high you will lose it.

No 12-word seed phrase, there's no way to recover.
It's gone forever and your wife can't recover it.

Upon creating the wallet, your wife didn't get this 12-word seed phrase the same as yours?
If ever you have those seeds, you can import them into another wallet like Electrum and recover your Bitcoin.

That's why we should learn to store our Bitcoin in a non-custodial wallet that we must have control over the keys or seed phrase.
As a golden saying, we must follow, "Not your keys, not your Bitcoin".

Surely op's wife got the seed phrase to her wallet, but she does not understand the BTC network and so she didn't make a proper backup of it. It is very easy for someone who does not know what they are doing to lose their seed phrase because they probably do not know how important it is in recovering their funds.
I have never used the BTC.com wallet, neither do i recommend it as a BTC wallet. But it is a self custodial wallet.

The bitoin.com automated cloud backup service feature was activated in version 7.28 and up. I searched uptodown.com to see the release date and it appears to be in 2020. According to what was mentioned, the money was sent in 2021, so there may be a possibility of getting her money back.

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ptp-er Ask her to log in using a Google or iCloud account, then download a new copy of the wallet and follow the instructions https://support.bitcoin.com/en/articles/7439519-how-to-use-the-automated-cloud- backup-service-on-ios-bitcoin-com-wallet-app-v-7-28-and-up

If she is lucky and makes a copy on the cloud, she may be able to get her money back.

It could be better if OP will comeback and answer the questions asked above, especially if she save the 12-word backup in google drive at least mentioned by @OmegaStarScream.

To be precised, it's bitcoin.com's wallet, not BTC.com, they are two different platform, although I'm not sure if btc.com still have wallet on their own.

I tried to install the bitcoin.com app to do some tests and indeed it didn't provide a seed phrase it only requires Google email to sign in.
You can only get the seed phrase after you sign in with your email and then go to settings>Backup & security>Manual backup>My BTC wallet.

If your wife didn't do this then the last option she had was to sign in again with the same email she used before. I'm not sure if she will get the same wallet after she signs in with the same email he used before but try it and maybe she will gain access again with her old wallet.

There is also a cloud backup it is disabled by default under settings>backup & security so she doesn't have any other choice but to try to recover it using the same email she used before.

it is an ex-wife due to a divorce.

So the op kind of scored if he hates her.

He paid what is due and she was careless with it.