Guest post by Michael Merhar of Merhar Law, PLLC
Whether most of your wealth is invested in crypto assets or you just like to dabble, it is important to know what is at stake if you do not create a thorough estate plan that accounts for all of your assets and continually monitor how your actions affect that plan. As more people invest in cryptocurrencies and there are more avenues available to gain exposure to crypto, more and more people will pass away leaving crypto assets on a variety of exchanges. Each of these exchanges has its own process for heirs/beneficiaries and executors/personal representatives to claim a deceased person’s assets. This article will outline what this process looks like for the most commonly encountered exchanges and brokers, including Coinbase, Robinhood, Binance, Kraken, Crypto.com, and Gemini, along with anecdotes about my recent experience with Robinhood.
Contents:
When Will You Need to Deal with a Crypto Exchange?
How Do You Start the Process of Getting a Deceased Person’s Crypto?
What Documents Do You Need?
How Do Exchanges Give You the Assets?
How Long Does the Process Take?
How Can You Plan to Ease the Process?
When Will You Need to Deal with a Crypto Exchange?
Any time a person dies leaving crypto assets on an exchange, someone–the deceased person’s executor/personal representative if the estate is being formally administered or an heir/beneficiary for small estates and summary administrations–will need to contact the exchange to start the process. As of this writing, none of the major crypto exchanges allows account holders to designate a beneficiary (even Robinhood splits accounts between crypto holdings and stocks/securities), which would otherwise allow assets held in a deceased person’s account to pass to the specified person without going through probate. And, unless a trust is registered with an exchange as a business entity or institutional investor (which usually requires transactions that are each at least $100,000), exchanges do not permit accounts to be registered in the name of a trust, which would also avoid the probate process. So, the process outlined in this article will apply to anyone who dies leaving assets on an exchange.
How Do You Start the Process of Getting a Deceased Person’s Crypto?
Beginning the process varies from state to state, but generally, the first step after you learn that a deceased person left assets on a crypto exchange is to file to open probate or estate proceedings in the county where the deceased person lived at the time of their death. Depending on the total amount of assets that need to be administered by the court, this may be a small estate affidavit (for Virginia: if the estate’s total value, except real estate, is not more than $50,000 [1]) or petition for summary administration (for Florida: if the estate’s total value, except homestead and other exempt property, is not more than $75,000 [2]), but for larger estates, it will be a petition for formal administration. If the deceased person had a will, you need to deposit it with the court.
Once probate is opened, small estates and summary administrations will close fairly quickly–courts may consider a small estate affidavit sufficient to close an estate and distribute assets, while a judge will sign an order of summary administration to distribute assets and close a summary administration–but formal administrations will require the court to appoint an executor/personal representative to administer the estate. The executor/personal representative gets their authority to collect (and demand) the estate’s assets by a court order called letters testamentary or letters of administration.
With the appropriate court document in hand, it is time to reach out to the exchange. Some exchanges, like most brokerages, have a designated estates department, but some route you through general customer service or do not clearly specify at all how to start the process. Coinbase uses this form to start the process; Robinhood has you initiate the process with the estates form on this page; Binance requires you to file an “Inheritance Appeal” (you need to have/open an account to file the form); Kraken has you submit a compliance and legal request form; for Crypto.com, email contact@crypto.com; and for Gemini, email support@gemini.com.
What Documents Do You Need?
Whether you provide them with your initial request to access a deceased person’s crypto exchange account or wait until the exchange specifically requests them from you, you will need to provide the exchange documents that support both your authority to act and how the crypto should be distributed. Each exchange has slightly different requirements, but each will require at least a copy of the deceased account holder’s death certificate and a copy of the letters of administration, small estate affidavit, or order of summary administration, depending on the type of probate case opened. Here are more specific requirements for each exchange:
Coinbase:
A copy of the decedent’s death certificate
Letters of administration, small estate affidavit, order of summary administration, or other court order regarding the distribution
A current, valid, government-issued photo ID of the person named in the court document (this will be the beneficiaries for small estates and the executor/personal representative in formal administrations)
A letter signed by the person named in the court document that tells Coinbase which Coinbase account to send the deceased account holder’s crypto
Robinhood:
Deceased account holder’s full legal name, Social Security Number, date of birth, and date of death
A photo/copy of the deceased account holder’s death certificate
For the person requesting access to the account, their name, date of birth, phone number, email address, and relationship to the deceased account holder
A color copy of the front and back of a current, valid, government-issued photo ID of the person requesting access to the account
You will later be asked to submit the court document authorizing access or distribution of the assets
Binance:
Deceased account holder’s Binance user ID, email, or phone number registered to the account
A certified copy of the decedent’s death certificate
A certified copy of the deceased account holder’s government-issued identification
A certified copy of a current, valid, government-issued photo ID of the person requesting access to the account
A certified copy of the court document authorizing access to or distribution of the assets in the account
Note that Binance is the only exchange that explicitly requires certified copies of documents, which I discuss below. However, since Binance wants all documents uploaded to its servers rather than mailed to its offices, it does not actually want these documents in hand, which sometimes defeats the purpose of certifying a copy of a document.
Kraken:
A copy of the decedent’s death certificate
A copy of the decedent’s will (if any)
A copy of a current, valid, government-issued photo ID of the person requesting access to the account
The court document authorizing access to or distribution of the assets in the account
Crypto.com does not publicly list what documents it requires and instead says to contact customer support, but it will likely require at least the following:
A copy of the decedent’s death certificate
The court document authorizing access to or distribution of the assets in the account
Gemini:
Gemini does not publicly list what is requires, but I reached out to their customer support and was told to provide the following:
A copy of the decedent’s death certificate
The court document authorizing access to or distribution of the assets in the account
Please note that while most exchanges will accept a scanned copy of a court order or other court document, some may require a certified copy of these documents. This means they want a copy of the document that comes directly from the court and is stamped by a clerk of the court. These can usually be ordered in-person at courthouses or online at courts’ websites. Unless otherwise specified, if an exchange wants a certified copy of a document, it is usually a good idea to have the document sent directly from the court to the exchange so that it arrives at the exchange in the same envelope sealed by the court.
Other than court documents and documents for which copies can be obtained by a government office (like death certificates), a certified copy can usually be obtained from a notary if you are able to provide the notary the original document. The notary has to physically make a copy of the original document for it to be a certified copy, and the notary is the one that executes a certificate in which they state that they made a copy of the original document. In Virginia and Florida, a notary can make a certified copy of a driver’s license, even though it is a government-issued ID.
How Do Exchanges Give You the Assets?
After an exchange has processed all of your documents and is ready to distribute the assets, some will give you the option of transferring the crypto into your (or the beneficiaries’) account or liquidating all holdings and issuing a check, while others will only let you transfer the crypto into a new account. Robinhood, having one foot in each crypto and stocks/securities, gives you the option to immediately liquidate, while at least Coinbase and Binance require you to transfer the crypto into another account, at which point you can sell it or move it off the exchange. If you are an executor/personal representative, you should consult with a probate or estates attorney before liquidating any holdings to make sure you are legally authorized to do so.
How Long Does the Process Take?
Once you have submitted everything to the exchange, you are largely at its mercy as to how long it takes to get access to the locked crypto. Most exchanges do not publicly state how long the process takes, but Binance states it usually takes at least one to two months (longer for “complex cases,” an undefined term). In my recent experience with Robinhood, it took about two months from the time I submitted all documents to the time my client had access to the assets. If things start to drag unreasonably long, a probate or estates attorney can request a court to compel an exchange to release assets it holds, but this is usually not necessary.
So, you should expect that from the time initial documents are submitted to a court to open probate until the time assets are in hand will be about three to four months for small estates and potentially six months or longer for estates going through formal administration. Of course, this can vary wildly depending on the jurisdiction handling the case–large, urban areas may have courts heavily backed up with cases, while smaller counties may be able to move cases along more quickly.
How Can You Plan to Ease the Process?
While serious, long-term crypto investors may not usually leave much (if any) of their holdings on exchanges, we do not generally control when we die, so even a relatively small amount of a token left on an exchange for a limit order may force a loved one to deal with an exchange to make sure your holdings pass as intended. Even for those who just dabble in crypto investing, it is important to get educated.
Here are additional resources:
Consult with a local attorney who is knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies to explore your options, make sure that your interests are protected, and ensure that your hard-earned holdings are not left to sit on an exchange forever.
About the Author
Michael Merhar is a wills, trusts, and estates attorney in Gainesville, Florida. The author is a former police officer who worked closely with Ben Inman when he was a prosecutor in Arlington, Virginia. Since then, both have opened their own estate planning firms and continue to study estate planning issues unique to cryptocurrencies.
[1] Va. Code Ann. § 64.2-601 (2024)
[2] § 735.201, Fla. Stat. (2024)
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