Plan for your heirs
If something happens to you, your family needs to know the vault exists and to be able to reach it. SignBit helps you write both down, and if it comes to it we can add the one signature that lets your heirs finish the job. Nothing runs on a timer and nothing assumes you have died. The conditions are set out below, and you can stop the whole thing with one click.
1. What this is, and what it is not
Two separate things sit behind the word inheritance here. The first is documentation, meaning a printed plan and a record of who inherits. It works without us, whether we are unreachable for an afternoon or gone for good. The second is a claim. If your heirs hold enough of your keys but not quite enough to spend, they can ask us for the signature that closes the gap. There is still no dead-man's switch and no timelock. A claim needs a real person to come forward and prove they hold your keys, twelve months without a sign of you, and ninety days during which we try to reach you. If your heirs already hold enough keys, they need none of this, because the printed plan is faster and needs nobody's permission.
2. Record who inherits
On your vault, open Beneficiaries and add the people this vault is meant for. A name is enough, though a relationship and contact details help your family identify and find them later. Adding someone does not contact them. If you want, you can separately ask us to email one of them to check the address works. They answer once, and if they decline we never write to them again. Either way they still appear on your plan.
3. Print the recovery plan
From your vault, open Export and print the Recovery plan. It contains the quorum in plain words, the full descriptor with its checksum, every key and who holds it, the people you recorded, and step-by-step recovery instructions that need no website and no login. Keep it with your key backups, and make sure someone you trust knows where that is. A perfect plan nobody can find protects nobody.
4. If the worst happens
Someone you named, or anyone holding your keys, starts at the inheritance page and says where the coins should go. They then prove which of your keys they hold, by signing a message with each one. Nothing moves until four things are true. They have proven all but one of the keys your vault needs to spend, your account has been silent for twelve months, a ninety-day window has passed while we try to reach you, and a member of our senior staff has read the case and agreed. Every message we send you in that window carries a link that ends the request on the spot. If you are alive and simply busy, one click is all it takes.
5. Keep it current
A plan goes stale. Reprint it whenever you add or move a key, change your quorum, or someone's circumstances change, and re-read it once a year. If you have not signed in for a long time we will send a reminder. Signing in is also what resets the dormancy clock, so the reminder is worth acting on. Nothing about your vault changes on its own, but a long silence is one of the conditions a claim needs.