Inheritance for coins that have no customer support
If your recovery words are lost, the coins are gone. If they are found by the wrong person, the coins are gone. This workflow removes both failure modes at once, with no key for anyone to steal.
The two ways crypto dies
Self custody fails in opposite directions. Keep the recovery words too safe and your family inherits an unreachable wallet. Keep them too available and a burglar, a houseguest, or a single dishonest confidant inherits it instead. Every traditional answer, the safe, the bank box, the trusted brother, picks one risk to fix and makes the other worse.
Splitting the words into pieces fixes both. No piece reveals anything alone, and your family only needs three of the five to bring the wallet back. There is no master key sitting anywhere, because the secret itself is what gets divided.
The setup: spread across people, places, and miles
- check_circlePiece 1: your brother, out of state. Distance is a feature. A regional disaster or a targeted robbery cannot reach him.
- check_circlePiece 2: your closest friend, locally. Someone who would be in the room when your family needs help, and who knows crypto well enough to keep the recovery calm.
- check_circlePiece 3: a sealed envelope in your attorney’s file. Professional custody with a paper trail.
- check_circlePiece 4: laminated and stored in a fireproof safe at home. Immediate access for the everyday case where you are recovering your own wallet.
- check_circlePiece 5: a safe deposit box at a bank in town. Slow, boring, and very hard to burgle.
Run the disaster math
House fire: pieces 4 and possibly 3 of your hiding knowledge are gone, but your brother, friend, and the bank box still make three. Robbery at gunpoint: the safe yields one piece, two short of anything. You die suddenly: brother, attorney, and bank box make three without your friend even being needed. Every single failure leaves at least three pieces standing.
Write the recovery runbook
Crypto recovery fails on knowledge more often than on access, so keep a plain language letter with your will: which wallet software, roughly what the wallet holds, who has pieces, and the rule that any three together in the HeirLock app reveal the recovery words. Tell your family to move the funds to a fresh wallet once recovered, since the words have now been seen.
Rotate when life changes
A falling out with the friend, a move, a new wallet: split again and redistribute. Five fresh pieces take minutes. For background on why this beats sharing the words outright, see seed phrase backup and crypto inheritance.
Crypto holder questions
Is splitting my recovery words safer than a metal backup plate?
A metal plate survives fire but not discovery. Whoever finds it owns your coins. A piece survives discovery too, because it reveals nothing alone and recovery needs three. Many holders do both: pieces for inheritance, and the wallet itself secured however they prefer day to day.
Do the pieces touch the internet?
No. HeirLock runs offline on your iPhone with no account and no server. You can put the phone in airplane mode during the whole process. The pieces leave the app only in the ways you choose, including on paper.
What about my passphrase or hidden wallet?
Include everything needed for a clean recovery in the text you split: the recovery words, any added passphrase, and a note about which derivation or wallet app to use. A family that recovers half a puzzle has recovered nothing.
Could my brother and my friend team up and take the coins?
Two pieces are still one short. They would also need the attorney's sealed envelope, your fireproof safe, or your safe deposit box, all of which leave a trail. Raising the bar from one person to a three way conspiracy involving a law office is the entire point.
Keep the wallet recoverable without giving it away
Split your recovery words across people and places so your family has a path in and nobody holds the whole phrase today.
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