When you can't be there,your family inherits together.
A self-custodial estate plan for crypto. Named recipients, named shares, a quorum signature, a built-in cooling-off period. No custodian. No court. No single point of failure.
Above: step 3 of the vault setup — named heirs, named shares, sum locks to 100%. You decide the numbers; your family doesn't have to.
The split is yours to draw.Exact, every time.
Move the handles. The column reflows live. We don't round — your wishes are written into the contract exactly as you set them. Three heirs, ten heirs, the same rule.
- 45%alice.eth0x7c4a…2a1f
- 30%bob.eth0x9e21…b8c3
- 25%dad.eth0x4d80…7f0e
Two heirs alone can't act.
Inheritance isn't a single signature. We require a quorum so no one heir — and no one impersonating an heir — can move the funds alone. The family signs together, or nobody does.
The quorum threshold is yours to set: 2-of-3, 3-of-5, or any shape that fits your family. The vault refuses any movement below the threshold. The contract is the rule — not us, not a custodian, not a probate judge.
And if a key is lost — death, illness, a hostile relationship — guardians you nominate can extend or replace the claim window. The recovery path is always non-custodial.
The inheritance problem nobody wants to think about
If you hold any meaningful amount of crypto, you've thought about this. Maybe only briefly, at 2am, after reading another story about a family that lost everything because nobody knew the seed phrase.
The traditional answers are unsatisfying: tell your spouse, write it on paper, put it in a safe deposit box, give it to your lawyer. Each one trades one kind of risk for another. Tell your spouse and you've created a single point of failure. Write it on paper and someone might find it. Give it to a lawyer and you've re-introduced the custodian you were trying to avoid.
HeirVault is the first answer that doesn't make this trade. Your keys never leave you. Your plan never leaves the chain. The people you name receive what you intended, in the shares you intended, after the wait you intended. Nobody alone can act on your behalf. Not your spouse, not your lawyer, not us, not a hacker.
The shape of the plan
You write a few simple rules:
- Who inherits. Up to dozens of named recipients across nine chains. Each gets a share of the vault.
- How much each receives. Shares are written in basis points (so they always sum to 100%). You can set a 90/5/5 across three children, or anything else.
- When the plan begins to wake up. After your last heartbeat (your monthly check-in) plus a grace period you set. 30, 90, or 180 days are common.
- Who counts as a quorum. Out of the people you name, how many must sign together to claim. We require at least two, even for one named heir paired with one steward, because one signature is never enough.
- How long the cool-off is. After the quorum signs, a 20-minute commit-reveal window passes before funds unlock. If anything is wrong, the alarm can be pulled.
What happens when the time comes
Your last heartbeat passes. The grace period elapses. Your named recipients can now initiate a claim. From anywhere, on any device, from their own wallets.
They sign. The quorum reaches its threshold. A 20-minute cool-off begins. After that, each recipient can pull their share. The withdrawal is pull-based, not push: each person claims what they inherit, when they're ready.
If you've also set up standing orders (say, $10,000 per month for ten years to a child instead of a single lump sum), those continue to release on schedule, the same way they did when you were alive.
"I'd been putting this off for years. The hardest part wasn't the tech. It was deciding the rules. Once the rules were on paper, the rest took an afternoon. My kids each know what's coming and how. That alone was worth it."
Founder, Series B fintech
What can't go wrong (and we mean it)
- One bad heir cannot drain the vault. The quorum is required. Always.
- A hacker who takes one heir's wallet still can't act. They need the rest of the quorum. Your plan has more locks than any single person.
- A "premature" claim cannot succeed. The heartbeat plus grace period is enforced by the contract. We cannot override it. Nor can anyone else.
- HeirVault disappearing changes nothing. The vault is a smart contract. It runs whether or not we're here. Recovery instructions are mirrored on IPFS and GitHub.
What if life changes?
It always does. You can change the rules at any moment, while you're alive: add an heir, remove one, adjust shares, swap out a steward, change the cadence of the heartbeat. Each change is just a transaction from your wallet.
If you ever feel uncertain (you suspect a wallet may have been compromised, or you simply want a step back), you can pause the vault. Pausing freezes claims and standing orders for up to seven days, then auto-resumes. You can pause again. There is no scenario in which a moment of doubt costs you.
What it costs
HeirVault charges a flat subscription, not a percentage of your assets. The economics scale with you: a $50,000 vault and a $5 million vault cost the same. The contracts themselves only charge network fees on actions like check-ins and claims, paid by whoever initiates them.
What it doesn't replace
HeirVault is a self-custodial inheritance layer for your crypto holdings. It does not replace a will, a trust, a tax advisor, or a conversation with your lawyer about how your jurisdiction treats digital assets. It does, however, replace the seed-phrase-on-paper problem. For most families, that's the hard part.
Ready to set this up?
If this is the first inheritance you've planned, we recommend booking a 30-minute concierge call. We'll walk through the decisions with you. We never see your keys.