Best way of putting Bitcoins in your will?

[Shermo]

I am wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the best way to put bitcoins in your will? I thought about a paper wallet but then I wouldn't want to hand this over to a solicitor because then they in theory would have access to my stash, assuming they had any clue what a bitcoin was and how to cash them out.

I am off to write up a will later this week and whilst my stash isn't worth a fortune its not an amount I should leave out of my will for my partner / family but I'm not sure what the best way is of including it in?

I assume some others must be in the same situation and may have already come up with a good solution already?

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[Kluge]

Fragmented "privkeys" (or, m of n). These can be created using the casascius address utility and probably some others.

You basically create a kind of fragmented privkey*, where there are (usually, but not necessarily) three different privkey fragments. You require at least two to discover the privkey. There are some different ways of doing this from here. You could keep one, give one to the beneficiary now, and have the lawyer/whatever hold on to the other. This doesn't cover you and the beneficiary dying at the same time, but since "m" and "n" are variables, you could have a 9 of 10 kind of key and probably figure something out with the tradeoffs you're most comfortable with.

*it's not actually a privkey - Idunno if there's an actual name for it... archive? I guess it is technically a private key, but not the privkey to a pubkey in Bitcoin. It's just a secret to get the privkey. (I think)

[bitcon]

if you dont want to involve a lawyer this is what i would do. encrypt your wallet with a password.  put your wallet.dat on a usb thumbdrive.  you can give the password(s) to the wallet but not the wallet to at least a couple friends or relatives you trust and think will outlive you in a sealed envelope with instructions to inheritors if you pass away. you can then choose to give the wallet.dat flash drive to the future inheritor or store them at your house with instructions.  i would do both for redundancy