Crypto & Digital Asset Estate Planning

Yes, if you hold more than a trivial amount. A standard will or trust that does not specifically address digital assets leaves your family dependent on their ability to find passwords, seed phrases, and account credentials you may never have documented. Crypto has no beneficiary designation and no institution to call. A crypto-aware estate plan is not optional for holders of any serious size — it is the difference between your family inheriting the assets and your family watching them sit on-chain forever.

Coinbase (and most major exchanges) have an estate-transfer process that requires a death certificate, court documents naming an executor, and identity verification of the heirs. They do not offer traditional transfer-on-death designations. Your family has to know the account existed — which is why documenting your exchange holdings in a trust-integrated inventory is critical. Without the inventory, your family may never learn the account was there at all.

You cannot rely on the hardware wallet itself — you have to plan for the seed phrase. The device is replaceable; the seed phrase is the asset. We design a documented, trust-integrated plan for where the seed phrase lives, who has access, and how it gets reconstructed if it is split across multiple custodians. That plan should be tested in your lifetime, not discovered after your death.

Yes, unless it is titled in a trust or structured to pass outside probate. Self-custodied crypto held in your personal wallet is part of your probate estate under Texas law. Crypto held on a custodial exchange is typically also probate property unless held in a trust-titled account. Avoiding probate for crypto generally means a revocable living trust funded with the assets during life, not a will that refers to them at death.

There is no federal income tax on the inheritance itself, and the cost basis of your crypto is stepped up to fair market value on the date of your death. That step-up can eliminate decades of unrealized capital gain. There may be federal estate tax if your total estate exceeds the federal exemption — a particular concern given the exemption is set to drop substantially after 2025. Texas has no state estate tax. We plan for both basis and estate-tax implications as part of every digital-asset engagement.

It depends on their technical comfort, the size of the holding, and whether you have any concern about concentrating that much single-point-of-failure risk. For most married couples with meaningful crypto, yes — spouses should be able to access the assets without needing to wait for letters testamentary. That access has to be structured, documented, and tested. Improvised arrangements tend to fail at exactly the moment they are needed.

If the device is still working and you have a backup of the seed somewhere, you can recover. If the device is broken and you have no seed backup, the coins are gone permanently. There is no reset, no customer service, no court that can order a recovery. This is why seed-phrase custody planning is the single most important part of a self-custody estate plan.

You can, but not directly. Texas minors cannot hold significant assets outright, which means crypto left to a minor has to go into a testamentary trust, a UTMA account, or (preferably) a trust structure with crypto-specific successor-trustee powers. Naming a minor as beneficiary of a crypto wallet without planning for custody until adulthood is a frequent and expensive mistake.