I'm a lawyer, working in bitcoin full time since early 2014. I've been working on this inheritance issue for a few years now. You can find free resources at my website: empoweredlaw.com, including a "Letter to Loved Ones" template that you can use to let your people know you have bitcoin after you're gone. If you need more, I've also written a book: Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning, which will guide you through the steps of making a plan that will (hopefully) work for you and your loved ones.

There is no one solution, every family is different. Some people have families who are technophobes, others are cryptosavvy. Some have younger or older people they are responsible for, others don't. Your risk profile and your family situation will determine what the "right" plan is for you. However the most important thing you can do to help them is designate 2-3 people who can help them recover your assets when you're gone. It's likely you're the bitcoin expert in your house. When you're gone they'll need someone else, trustworthy, to help them. I don't like the idea of just one person (single point of failure) so I prefer to designate a couple of people who don't know each other or have no reason to collude.

Hope this helps.

I've published a bunch of free resources to help you create your own bitcoin inheritance plan. You can find templates on medium.com/@pamelawjd or on my website empoweredlaw.com. I've also given talks about this topic at LaBitConf, Honey Badger, Hackers Congress and similar events. You can watch them for free on youtube (they're not lectures, hopefully they're kinda entertaining). If you like the style and want to do more, I also published a book last year called Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning; A Simple Guide for Owners. You can see the table of contents and read free excerpts at amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1947910116/.

Just so you know, you don't have to hire a lawyer and you don't have to trust any third party. Those are common myths, lots of people believe them but they're simply not true.

Good planning is more than just having someone find your keys. Because you won't be around to help them, and they'll be grieving and probably not too interested in your magic internet money, they might forget or worse get swindled by someone who offers to "help them". Leaving keys in a picture frame is usually a bad idea -they'll probably never find it if something happens to you - or they'll give it away to someone or send it to a charity as a donation. If you actually care about your family and friends getting your bitcoin, then you have to do something.

Of course you can always choose to do nothing, but if you do make a plan you could donate it to an open source project that you care about or directly to a developer whose work you want to support. Or an organization like the EFF that works to support free speech online.

Hope this is helpful. Good luck.

I've been working on this problem for over a year now and have published some free resources for the community to use. Take the templates and make them your own, delete whatever doesn't make sense for you (including the references to Third Key Solutions if you want) and add the things that do. Good luck!

Humans Die. Cryptocurrencies Don't. https://medium.com/@pamelawjd/humans-die-cryptocurrencies-dont-d392627bb15c
Letter to Your Loved Ones. A template to help your heirs understand your cryptoassets. https://medium.com/@pamelawjd/letter-to-loved-ones-a-template-for-your-crypto-estate-planning-4ee0975434e4