Your Personalised Setup
This is your home base. Bookmark it. It covers what you have, the 7 steps to completion and some important information to read first. When you’re ready, set aside 20 minutes to complete the personalised setup.
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▶ Watch this first: the fastest path to a completed kit
If you want a quick result, watch this 17-minute walkthrough before you start. It is the single biggest thing that separates people who finish their kit in an afternoon from people who get stuck for weeks.
17 steps to a completed plan
Your kit contains 13 documents in total. Reference guides, checklists and educational material all play a role, but there are 5 you actually need to complete.
Complete Digital Asset Inventory A practical inventory of your bitcoin holdings and digital accounts. Records what you have and where it lives at a high level. Does not contain access information. This is to assist your Executor in identifying what exists. Importantly, you do not need to complete every field. If you're looking for a quick result, focus only on the section that applies to your bitcoin and remove the rest.
Complete Will Your legally binding document. Appoints your Executor, names beneficiaries, and governs the distribution of your estate. Must be signed and witnessed correctly to be valid. Becomes public if it goes through probate, so private bitcoin details should not appear here. If you care about privacy and don't want to create an operational security risk for your beneficiaries, do not list bitcoin as a specific gift; instead include it as part of the residue estate (everything left over that is not specifically gifted).
Complete Letter of Wishes Private, non-binding guidance for your Executor. Covers your preferences about how bitcoin should be handled (for example, "don't sell in a panic"), names your Digital Asset Adviser, and includes funeral wishes and personal messages. Sits alongside your Will but stays private.
Complete Beneficiary Personal Message and Education Guide The document your loved ones read after they inherit. It teaches them what bitcoin is, why you held it, and how to look after it safely, and it carries a personal message from you. Mostly fixed educational content, with a few parts you personalise so it sounds like you.
Complete Technical Roadmap The most sensitive document in your kit. This is where you record the practical instructions your Executor will need to actually access your bitcoin, such as wallet types, seed phrase locations, passphrase hints, and multisig quorum details. You can be explicit or implicit in how much detail you provide (implicit is recommended). Edit it digitally, complete it by hand, and store it separately from your Will. Use this template or your own method, but you must have an access plan.
Sign your Will with 2 independent witnesses Work through the Signing Ceremony Checklist on the day. Both witnesses present in the same room, eligible (not beneficiaries or their spouses, both 18 or older), every page signed and witnessed.
Give your Executor everything. Store the Technical Roadmap separately. Give your Executor the 5 documents they need now. Store the Technical Roadmap separately, off-site, in a secure location, and make sure your Executor knows how to reach it.
2Important: read before completing your personalised setup
Read these 3 points before you fill in any documents. They shape decisions you'll make throughout the rest of your plan.
Assets capable of inheritance
A Will only controls assets that form part of your estate and are legally capable of passing under it. Several common asset types are governed by separate legal arrangements and may pass outside your Will entirely, regardless of what your Will says. This is one of the most important things to understand before you finalise it.
- Assets held jointly as joint tenants, such as a family home or shared bank account, pass automatically to the surviving owner by right of survivorship. Your Will does not control them. Most couples hold their primary residence this way, but it is worth confirming. The rule is simple: jointly held assets go to the other owner, automatically.
- Superannuation and SMSF death benefits are governed by the fund's rules and any binding death benefit nomination, not by your Will.
- Company assets are owned by the company, not by you personally; your Will deals with your shares, not the underlying assets.
- Trust assets are governed by the trust deed; being a beneficiary, appointor or director does not make them your personal estate assets.
- Assets with contractual or platform transfer restrictions, and some foreign assets, may follow their own rules or foreign succession law.
Before completing your Will, identify which assets you own personally and which are held jointly, in trust, through a company, through superannuation, or overseas. That exercise can materially change whether your Will works the way you expect. For the full explanation, see "Assets that may not pass under the Will" in the Companion Guide (around pages 9 to 13).
Bitcoin privacy and inheritance
The default in this kit is to keep your bitcoin private by not naming it in your Will. The reason: once a Will is filed for probate it can become a public document, and naming bitcoin (or specific amounts) can expose your holdings and create real security risks for your beneficiaries. Leaving bitcoin in the residue keeps that detail off the public record.
You can choose to name bitcoin specifically if you want stronger legal certainty, but understand the trade-offs: less privacy, and the gift can fail if that holding no longer exists at your death (ademption).
Further reading: see "The Privacy versus Probate Dilemma" and "Step 7: Complete your Letter of Wishes" in the Companion Guide (around pages 19 to 21 and 56 to 61).
Storage and distribution of documents
Just as with the security of your private keys, you know your own circumstances best. How you distribute these documents is your decision: what you hand your Executor, when you hand it over, and whether you involve any third parties at all.
Suggested principles
- Prefer simplicity over complexity. An Executor who can carry out a simple plan is worth more than a clever but complicated one. The more parties you involve, the more that can go wrong.
- Appoint an Executor you trust. A trusted Executor reduces the need to bring in multiple third parties.
Recommended storage
The simplest approach works on two assumptions: (1) you have appointed an Executor you trust, and (2) your Letter of Wishes tells them how to reach your Technical Roadmap without revealing its contents. If both are true, your Executor has 1 job when the time comes: retrieve the Technical Roadmap. Everything else they already hold.
- Give to your Executor now: Will, Letter of Wishes, Digital Asset Inventory, Bitcoin Estate Administration and Executor Education Guide, Beneficiary Personal Message and Education Guide.
- Keep at home: your personal copies, for reference. With strong physical security you can keep copies of all of these at home. Otherwise, distribute copies elsewhere for redundancy.
- Store separately and off-site: the Technical Roadmap, your most sensitive document. A bank vault, a safety deposit box, or a secure home safe. Your Executor must know where it is, ideally described in your Letter of Wishes.
Keys are not covered here. This framework covers your documents, not how your seed phrases, hardware wallets and signing devices are distributed. That depends on your custody setup and is your decision.
3Supporting documents (optional reading)
These documents support the 5 core ones. Read the short summary, open the full version in your browser, or download a copy.
Companion Guide
The Companion Guide is the in-depth reference for the whole kit. Whenever you have a question about a decision, a trade-off, or how the documents work together, this is where to look. It is long by design; you do not read it cover to cover. Use your personalised PDF as your guide, and dip into the Companion Guide for detail when you need it.
Bitcoin Administration and Executor Education Guide
This guide is written for your Executor. It explains, in plain language, what bitcoin is, what they are responsible for, and how to approach recovering and distributing it safely; including when to bring in your Digital Asset Adviser. You do not need to complete it; it is there so your Executor can get up to speed when the time comes.
Checklists
3 printable checklists help you finish, sign, and maintain your plan. Read what each one covers, then open or download the full version to work through and print.
Kit Completion Checklist
Signing Ceremony Checklist
About your bitcoin and digital assets
This setup takes between 10 and 20 minutes. The outcome? Based on your answers, it produces a downloadable PDF showing you exactly which clauses to keep, which to delete, and what to fill in across your 5 core documents.
About your Will
About your Letter of Wishes
About your message to beneficiaries
Your access plan: required, not optional
Read this carefully. This is the most important section of your entire estate plan.
Every other document in this kit assumes one thing: that when you die, your Executor will be able to access your bitcoin. If they can't, none of the rest matters.
The Technical Roadmap template is one way to document access. It's most useful for self-custody setups with seed phrases, passphrases, and multiple devices. For simpler setups, alternatives may be more appropriate.
You do not have to use the Technical Roadmap template. But you must have some access plan.
Personalised Setup Done
You're now one step closer to your Bitcoin inheritance plan. Click below to generate your PDF guide. Save it, print it if you prefer, and keep it open beside you as you work through your 5 core documents.
For straightforward estates, most people complete the documents in 2 to 4 hours. More complex situations like multisig, blended families, foreign assets, and testamentary trusts will naturally take a little longer.
If you’d like to move through it faster with hands-on support, consider upgrading to Do It With Dale. It includes 2 × 30-minute video consultations and comes with a 60-minute guarantee: if we can’t finalise your Bitcoin estate plan across those two sessions after you’ve done your prep work, you’ll get a full refund, no questions asked.
Building your guide...
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Save your PDF somewhere you'll find it, then keep it open beside you as you work through the 5 core documents. You can close this tab when you're ready.
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