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Digital assets and estate planning
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A spouse looking to make a claim over a family trust has three potential lines of attack. Each one can seriously dent family wealth if there is no planned and detailed defence in place. However there are a number of practical steps ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals and their advisers can take to shut down all three lines of attack – and proactively secure family wealth for future generations.
Depending on who you believe as many as three million bitcoins are currently “irretrievable” (approximately £20 billion worth at today’s prices). The most common reasons cited for this are lost retrieval codes (known as “private keys”) and owners passing away without leaving private keys to their next of kin.
This is just one issue that the digital age has introduced to estate planning. An individual’s digital “estate” can be comprised of a variety of digital assets with differing degrees of financial and sentimental value.
Following on from our blog post earlier this year on the position in the US here we consider how digital estates are dealt with on death in England and Wales from a...
Read the full article here.
