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Securing your bitcoin legacy doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right planning, resources, tools, and partners, you can ensure your loved ones receive what you’ve built after you’re gone, without unnecessary stress, delays, or risk.
As the leader in collaborative custody, Unchained offers the most secure and straightforward way to plan for your bitcoin’s future. Every feature is designed to give you the confidence and peace of mind that your bitcoin is safe today, and your heirs will have a clear, secure path to access it when the time comes.
One of the most powerful tools Unchained offers is the ability to designate transfer-on-death (“TOD”) beneficiaries for your vaults. This article explains what a TOD beneficiary is, how they function, and why they are an important consideration in your bitcoin estate plan.
A transfer-on-death beneficiary is an individual or entity you designate to receive your bitcoin when you’re gone. Designating a TOD beneficiary can simplify the inheritance process because TOD accounts are generally excluded from state probate laws.
Designating a TOD beneficiary on your Unchained vault allows your loved ones to quickly access their inheritance, keeping details about your bitcoin private and out of the public probate process. Importantly, your beneficiary has no rights to your bitcoin while you're alive.
You can assign a beneficiary to each vault in your individual account. Beneficiaries can be individuals, such as your spouse, children, relatives, or friends, or entities like charities, businesses, or trusts.
When selecting a beneficiary, consider their age, financial maturity, and bitcoin knowledge. It’s a good idea to designate a contingent beneficiary to serve as a backup in the event your primary beneficiary is not alive to receive your bitcoin.
While TOD beneficiaries can simplify the estate planning process, they may not suit every situation. Because TOD designations apply to specific assets and bypass probate, changes to a will or broader estate plan will not alter who has legal claim to these assets after you’re gone. As circumstances change and life gets more complex (e.g., marriage, divorce, grandchildren), you must ensure that your TOD beneficiary designations are up to date and accurately reflect your wishes. In such cases, TOD beneficiaries may no longer be the optimal tool to manage your estate. Before designating TOD beneficiaries, consult with your attorney to determine if they are appropriate for your situation.
When incorporating beneficiaries into your bitcoin estate plan, careful consideration must be given to how your keys will be managed and accessed by your beneficiaries. The goal is to ensure a seamless transition of your bitcoin without compromising your security during your lifetime or making it overly complex for your beneficiaries after your passing.
With an Unchained vault, your beneficiary doesn't need an in-depth understanding of how bitcoin self-custody works (because Unchained can assist them), but they will need to know the location of at least one of the seed phrase backups. Our inheritance protocol provides a flexible, step-by-step guide to safely share information with your beneficiary or another person you trust.
If you'd like your loved ones to be more involved in the security of their inheritance, Unchained's Connections feature serves as a helpful option and opportunity to educate your beneficiaries and equip them with the skills they need to secure their inheritance long after you're gone. With granular permissions and settings, you can control what information you share and what you keep private.
Unlike traditional custodians that allow customers to assign multiple beneficiaries to a single account, Unchained's model allows you to designate a primary beneficiary for each vault within your account. This approach simplifies the inheritance process and gives you the most flexible set of options to create fully customizable inheritance strategies. You can always split your bitcoin between multiple vaults to accommodate multiple beneficiaries if needed.
Consider the following example. Alice has held bitcoin for several years using an Unchained collaborative custody vault. She wants to designate her son, Bob, as the primary beneficiary of her vault. By following the Unchained’s inheritance protocol, she can share a key backup with Bob. Alice retains full ownership and control over her bitcoin, and Bob has the information he needs to access his inheritance after she’s gone. In the event of Alice’s death, Bob could simply reach out to Unchained, who would help him gain access to Alice’s vault with Alice's key backup plus the Unchained key.
Alice may maintain this setup for several years. However, as time passes, she decides to update her key succession plan. To gain experience as a bitcoin user and reinforce self-custody best practices, Bob can create an Unchained account of his own, and Alice can delegate additional key management responsibilities to Bob. By sharing a key and creating a connection with Alice, they each help protect a piece of the family’s bitcoin legacy:
In the above example scenario, Bob is an active participant, securing one of the keys to Alice's vault. He’s able to view Alice's requests from his Unchained dashboard, perform device checks and other account maintenance tasks. While Alice and Bob could maintain this setup indefinitely as well, Bob's hands-on experience builds his familiarity and comfort with bitcoin. He eventually decides to create his own Unchained vault, so that he has a place to secure his own bitcoin while simultaneously remaining a participant in Alice's vault security:
These examples demonstrate that the combination of Unchained’s TOD designation and key connection features can provide customizable, effective ways to distribute risk and build resiliency in collaboration with a community of people you love and trust. To learn more about key connections, refer to our knowledge base, or schedule some time with us if you are interested in learning how you and your loved ones can benefit from collaborative custody.
If your estate plan includes multiple beneficiaries, we recommend creating separate vaults for each primary beneficiary. This approach allows for individual tracking and management, and enables you to create the most suitable key custody arrangement for each beneficiary.
Let's revisit Alice's situation from before. Several years have passed since Alice first created her Unchained vault. Bob is now married and has a son named David. Alice wants funds set aside specifically for her grandson David, so she creates another vault designating David as a TOD beneficiary. She also would like some of her bitcoin to go to a charity in the event of her death, so she creates a third vault designating her preferred nonprofit as yet a third TOD beneficiary:
No matter how complex your strategy is, Unchained offers flexible products and services that adapt to your evolving needs. For further details on various estate and inheritance strategies, please see our recent blog post: Preserving your bitcoin legacy: Estate and inheritance planning basics.
As a navigator on your bitcoin journey, Unchained is here to ensure that your legacy passes smoothly from one generation to the next. We offer support services to ensure you and your loved ones have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to secure your bitcoin legacy. Fora truly personalized experience, the Unchained Signature subscription provides a dedicated account management relationship, focused on achieving your specific goals.
To claim their inheritance, your beneficiaries simply need to contact us, and our team of bitcoin experts will guide them through the process. No matter how knowledgeable they are, you can rest easy knowing that Unchained’s team of technical experts is always ready to help. You can learn more about the process by visiting our Estate Center.
Unchained’s vault beneficiary features allow you to tailor your inheritance strategy to meet your family’s needs. At Unchained, we believe that securing your legacy is best accomplished in collaboration with a community of people you love and trust. We offer a robust set of estate and inheritance planning tools that allow you to build a personalized plan to secure your bitcoin legacy. Secure your future by scheduling a consultation with one of our bitcoin experts today.
This article is provided for educational purposes only, and cannot be relied upon as legal, tax, or investment advice. Unchained makes no representations regarding the legal, tax, or investment consequences of the structures herein, and all such questions should be directed to your attorney.
Allowing a Connection to maintain a key in your collaborative custody setup bears significant risks. Unchained has not vetted any connection you make using this feature, and does not make any assurance as to the fitness for the given task or fitness of character of any potential keyholder you select. Unchained bears no liability for the action or inaction of any keyholder selected using this feature. Please do your own research, and review the Unchained Terms of Service.
