Crypto Estate Planning — Transferring Digital Assets under the Law
Cryptocurrency and other blockchain assets are part of the estate: they are subject to the general rules of the Civil Code on inheritance, with their own technical peculiarities — private keys, wallets and custodial decisions included. This page explains what enters the estate, whether future assets may be provided for in a will, and which formal rules are indispensable for the validity of the will.
The peculiarity of crypto planning is that access to the asset depends technically on the keys, while the legal transfer rests on the general norms of inheritance. Proper planning therefore combines two contours: the legal one — through a will — and the technical one — ensuring the accessibility of the keys.
What Enters the Estate
The estate comprises the combination of the decedent's property rights — the estate assets — and obligations — the estate liabilities — that they had at the moment of death. The estate also includes the share in common property that fell to the decedent, or, if division in kind is impossible, the value of that property. In the cryptocurrency context this means: the assets in a wallet and the claims connected with them form estate assets, while obligations passing to the heirs form the liabilities.
Future Assets and Their Inclusion in a Will
The decedent may provide in a will for property that they did not yet have at the time of making the will, provided that at the moment of the opening of the estate such property is their own. For crypto planning this is very significant: assets existing at the time of writing and those to be acquired in the future can be designated by a single document, if at the moment of death they belong to the decedent.