A family came to see me last fall about their late father's Coinbase account. He had died suddenly — a heart attack at 58 — and his adult children were trying to close his estate. They knew the account existed because they had seen a 1099 from Coinbase in his tax file. They did not know the password, did not have the phone that ran the authenticator app, and did not know the roughly how much was in the account.
Eight months later, the assets transferred to his estate. Here is what that process actually looks like.
The Estate-Transfer Process, Step by Step
Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Binance US, and most other US-regulated exchanges have an internal process for "death of the account holder" transfers. It is not advertised on the homepage. It is usually buried in a help-center article, and the details vary by exchange and by the state of the decedent's residence.
Broadly, the process requires:
- A death certificate (certified copy)
- Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration from the Texas probate court
- Government-issued identification of the executor or administrator
- A transfer request, often submitted via a dedicated support email or form
- Occasionally, a court order specifically authorizing transfer of digital assets
Timeline: 60 to 180 days from first contact to funds transferred. For the family above, the delay was eight months — not because Coinbase was being difficult, but because the family did not initially have Letters Testamentary, then did not have the original death certificate, then ran into a verification issue with the executor's ID.
What the Exchange Will Not Do
The exchange will not tell you the account existed. If your family does not already know about the account, the exchange will not send a condolence email. In most cases, the account simply sits dormant, receiving deposit confirmations and price-movement notifications no one is reading.
The exchange will not transfer assets to a beneficiary under a transfer-on-death designation. Most US crypto exchanges do not offer TOD designations, which means crypto at an exchange goes through the full probate process in Texas unless it is titled in a trust.
The exchange will not negotiate with a family that provides only a will without Letters Testamentary. The will does not authorize anyone to act; the Letters do.
And critically, the exchange will not help your family access self-custody holdings that happen to be associated with that exchange account. If your father moved 5 BTC off Coinbase to a Ledger last year, Coinbase has no record and no way to help. That is a separate problem.
What a Trust-Integrated Plan Looks Like for Exchange Holdings
For Texas families with meaningful exchange balances, the right structure is to title the account — where the exchange permits it — in the name of a revocable living trust. Coinbase, as of the time of this article, does allow trust-titled accounts under specific KYC procedures. So does Kraken. Gemini's process is somewhat more cumbersome. Binance US does not generally permit trust titling.
Where trust-titled accounts are permitted, the assets pass directly to the successor trustee at death — no probate, no Letters Testamentary, no eight-month delay. Where trust titling is not possible, the plan has to include a documented inventory, a digital-fiduciary designation in the will, and a successor who knows the account exists.
The Inventory Is the Whole Game
Every single failure mode I have seen traces back to one root cause: the family did not know the account existed. Once the family knows, the process works — slowly, but it works. When the family does not know, the assets sit forever.
If you hold crypto on any US exchange, the most valuable thing you can do for your family today is write down the fact that the account exists, where it is, and approximately what is in it. Print the document. Store it with your will. Update it annually. That one sheet of paper may be worth more to your family than any specific planning technique.
Carla Alston leads the digital-asset estate planning practice at WG Law. Learn more or contact us to discuss your family's plan.