Advising Bitcoin Holders: Custody Architecture and Estate Planning Strategies

A material percentage of American households across all wealth levels now hold Bitcoin. When a client dies with unaddressed self-custody bitcoin, the asset may be permanently inaccessible, no bank to call, no court order that unlocks a hardware wallet. Estate attorneys face real professional liability exposure when they fail to ask about digital assets or attempt to assess custody arrangements without qualified technical help. This course provides the practical framework that attorneys need to identify bitcoin-related issues in their clients’ estates and to structure plans that actually work.

Attendees will learn how bitcoin custody works, what can go wrong during inheritance, and what sound custody structures look like. The course covers a bitcoin-specific intake framework, including why many answers require a technical advisor to interpret, the layered documentation model for integrating bitcoin into an estate plan, the ethics obligations triggered by client bitcoin holdings (competence, duty to inquire, scope of representation), and the professional responsibility issues raised when attorneys are asked to hold multisig keys.

This course is designed for estate planning attorneys, elder law attorneys, and probate practitioners at all experience levels. No prior knowledge of Bitcoin is assumed or required. Attorneys who already include digital asset questions in their intake will benefit from the detailed technical framework and ethics analysis; those who do not will gain the foundational knowledge to start doing so.

Learning Objectives:

1. Recognize when a client’s estate plan has a bitcoin problem, even when the client does not volunteer the information.
2. Identify the most common technical failure modes in Bitcoin custody and what sound solutions look like, without needing to become technically proficient.
3. Explain why a Bitcoin security advisor should participate in or conduct the technical portions of client intake for clients with self-custody Bitcoin.
4. Apply a layered documentation model to structure Bitcoin-related estate-planning materials.
5. Identify the professional responsibility implications of failing to conduct competent bitcoin intake and of attempting to assess technical custody arrangements without qualified assistance.
6. Explore the ethical issues raised by attorney participation in multisig custody arrangements, including competence, property safekeeping, confidentiality, and succession planning.