CRYPTO GUIDANCE INC.

Kansas City, MO

How to Leave Crypto to Your Family

Published 2026-08-15. Last updated 2026-08-15. Written by John Alewine, Crypto Guidance Inc.

Educational only. Not legal, tax, or estate advice.
When real money and a real family are involved, sit with an attorney who has done this before.

Who This Page Is For

The person who finally moved coins off an exchange, wrote a seed phrase on paper, and then realized the plan dies with them. I hear this in almost every serious self-custody session. The checklist on my Security page already asks whether your family could recover the stack. This page is how I walk that conversation.

It is not for someone looking for a clever dead-man switch that emails the seed to three group chats. Those products fail in ugly ways. It is also not a substitute for a will or a trust. Crypto inheritance is an operations problem sitting on top of an estate-law problem.

The Failure I Am Trying to Prevent

You did everything right. Hardware wallet. Paper backup. Maybe steel. Then you are gone, and the people who love you find a metal plate they cannot decode, or a Ledger they think is a USB stick, or nothing at all because you hid it too well. The coins keep existing. The family cannot spend them. That is the default outcome of good security with no instruction letter.

The opposite failure is just as common: the seed is in a note on the phone, or in the will that becomes a public court file, or with a "helpful" cousin who now has spend authority. Security and recoverability pull in opposite directions. The job is to pick a middle you can live with, and write it down.

What I Actually Tell People to Do

Write a letter of instruction, not a second seed. Plain English: what you hold, which device, where the backup lives, which app opens it, and who to call (me, an attorney, a tech-capable executor). Do not put the twelve or twenty-four words in the will. Wills can become public. Do not email the words to yourself "so they are somewhere."
Tell one living person that the letter exists, and where. A sealed envelope in the same safe as the steel plate is useless if nobody knows to look. The person does not need the words today. They need the map.
Prefer a setup your executor can actually finish. A single hardware wallet plus a steel backup plus a letter beats a four-person multisig that only you understand, unless the stack is large enough to justify the ops. Social recovery only works if the guardians know they are guardians and will still pick up the phone.
Test a recovery while you are alive. Restore from the backup onto a spare device, see the balance, wipe the spare. If you cannot do it on a Saturday, your spouse will not do it in a week of grief.
Keep the exchange small and documented. An IOU at Coinbase is easier for an executor than a lost passphrase wallet, and worse as a long-term vault. See exchanges and custodian. Leave login hints in the letter (password manager location, 2FA device), not the password itself on a sticky note.

What Not to Do

Do not split the seed into texts to three friends "for safety." That is three copies of spend authority, or a puzzle nobody can finish.
Do not rely on a hidden passphrase wallet unless the letter also explains that the visible 24 words open an empty decoy. Families restore the decoy, see zero, and stop.
Do not buy a "crypto inheritance app" that wants a copy of the seed. That is a hot copy with extra marketing.
Do not assume a hardware vendor will help your kids. Ledger and Trezor support cannot reconstruct a phrase you lost. The device comparison is about live use, not afterlife support.

Taxes and Titles, Briefly

Inherited crypto usually gets a step-up conversation with a tax pro. I am not that pro. Basis, probate, and whether a trust should hold the keys are lawyer-and-CPA work. The tax guide and cost basis page are the vocabulary. This page is how the keys survive the funeral.

If You Want Help Writing the Letter

That is ordinary consulting. Call or text (479) 283-6457 or email [email protected]. I will not hold your seed. I will help you write instructions a tired, sad person can follow.

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