{"id":21936,"date":"2018-06-15T15:54:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T15:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe6410022697"},"modified":"2025-01-28T17:02:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T17:02:40","slug":"till-death-do-us-fork-planning-cryptoasset-inheritance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/markets\/till-death-do-us-fork-planning-cryptoasset-inheritance","title":{"rendered":"Till Death Do Us Fork: Planning for Cryptoasset Inheritance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For many, the experience of adding crypto coins to their financial portfolios has proven to be the thrill of a lifetime. As a new type of holding with a unique set of tools and rules, cryptocurrency is wealth with its own wow factor.<\/p>\n

But at some point, the giddiness of fiscal discovery should be followed by a sobering reality: life is short. While established roadmaps have long existed for the orderly passing on of most worldly properties, titles, debts, rights and obligations upon a person\u2019s death, the same can\u2019t be said for cryptoassets.<\/p>\n

Think ahead to the days right after your last days on earth. How qualified is your will\u2019s executor to manage your balance sheet of bitcoin, ether, Ripple, ZenCash and Ada? Are your loved ones ready to receive your private keys and open your hardware wallet?<\/p>\n

Looking Ahead<\/h3>\n

A recent episode of The Tatiana Show<\/a> podcast tackled this inconvenient question when co-hosts Tatiana Moroz and Joshua Scigala interviewed Pamela Morgan, Esq.<\/a>, an attorney\/educator\/entrepreneur\/author who\u2019s been working exclusively with Bitcoin and open blockchains since 2014. The impetus for the appearance was the publication of her new book, Cryptoasset Inheritance Planning: A Simple Guide for Owners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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As is the case with most how-to tomes, the inspiration for Morgan\u2019s came from a real-world problem she kept encountering. \u201cI started asking annoying lawyer questions,\u201d Morgan says of her cryptocurrency-holding clients. \u201cLike, \u2018If you have a bunch of cryptoassets, can your family access them?\u2019 If you have people who depend on you financially, if you want to have other people in your life, or charities or political causes you like to support, to be able to take advantage of your bitcoin or your other cryptoassets, you have to do something. If you do nothing, [it \u2019s] pretty sure that your assets will not go where you want them to go, if they end up anywhere at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

You Can Be SURE<\/h3>\n

One of the cores to this blueprint for bitcoin-beyond-the-grave is executing what Morgan calls a SURE analysis, which stands for Security, Usability, Resilience and Efficiency. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we want your plan to be secure first,\u201d she notes, \u201cbut not security at the expense of all of the other things there, because your plan has to be usable, and not by you. We have all this knowledge of cryptocurrency, we know how we\u2019re holding our keys, and so there are these underlying assumptions. We don\u2019t realize that people don\u2019t have the same knowledge that we do. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo when people try to write it down for their heirs it becomes gibberish,\u201d she continues, \u201cbecause they don\u2019t know what a private key is. They don\u2019t know what a hardware wallet is \u2014 they don\u2019t even know how to plug it in. So the worst case scenario is what do they do? They don\u2019t just sit there. They go to the local Meetup group, Reddit, Facebook, and who\u2019s there to help them? Who\u2019s the greeting committee then?\u201d<\/p>\n

One can only imagine the trolls who are already hard at work, cooking up a sinister new industry built on stealing from confused beneficiaries. \u201cPeople are not going to say, \u2018Yes! My loved one is gone, now is the time for me to learn all about bitcoin,\u2019\u201d says Morgan. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an eye-opening point. Currently, cryptocurrency is not like the vast majority of inherited assets for which time-honored legal expertise abounds. Although that general knowledge gap may someday close, today\u2019s reality is that cryptoasset holders need a specific plan to ensure their beneficiaries are sufficiently educated on at least the bare mechanics of those holdings. Beyond that, it\u2019s their additional responsibility to connect them to trusted people and organizations that will help them, not hijack their inheritance.<\/p>\n

Get It Together \u2014 Together<\/h3>\n

Morgan suggests that the aforementioned security audit can be undertaken by the will\u2019s creator and a trusted significant other, such as a spouse, side-by-side with that person actually writing the letter of intent for them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat way they\u2019re guaranteed they know how to access everything,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re kind of creating this project together.\u201d <\/p>\n

As Moroz points out at the podcast\u2019s end, \u201cYou never know when it\u2019s time to go.\u201d Unless your own personal deal with the Devil has a precise expiration date, that\u2019s a simple truth to act on immediately. Having cryptoassets requires heretofore unprecedented estate planning \u2014 handle it any other way, and that high-tech portfolio is just child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n