Stan Reeves provides bitcoin custody and inheritance expertise that complements your estate planning practice — available as an expert referral resource and as a CLE presenter for bar associations nationwide.
More of your estate planning clients hold bitcoin than you may realize — and many of them hold amounts that are significant to their overall estate. Standard estate planning documents do not address bitcoin custody mechanics. A trust that directs the trustee to "transfer the decedent's digital assets" provides no practical guidance if the trustee does not know where the seed phrase is, does not understand what a seed phrase is, or discovers that the hardware wallet has been factory-reset.
The technical requirements of bitcoin inheritance planning fall outside most attorneys' scope — not because the law doesn't apply, but because the custody mechanics require specialist knowledge that estate law training does not provide. Your clients need both: a competent estate attorney and a bitcoin custody specialist who can design an inheritance architecture that your legal instruments can actually execute.
That is where I come in.
Unlike a brokerage account, bitcoin held in self-custody has no institution backing it. No court order restores access to a lost seed phrase. When a client dies with self-custodied bitcoin and no inheritance plan, that bitcoin is, in almost every case, permanently inaccessible to the estate.
Documentation of hardware device locations. Documentation of seed phrase backup locations. A clear inheritance procedure a technically non-expert heir can follow. An heir education session so the procedure is actually understood before it is needed.
Professor Emeritus, Auburn University — a credential you can cite to clients with confidence. "I am referring you to a bitcoin custody specialist" carries weight when the specialist has an established academic identity and a clearly defined practice area.
I handle custody architecture, inheritance procedures, and heir education. You handle the legal instruments. There is no overlap and no ambiguity. The custody plan I produce is designed to integrate with your trust and estate documents — not to replace them.
The inheritance documentation I produce for your client is written in plain language, formatted for inclusion in or alongside an estate package, and designed to be executed by a technically non-expert heir following instructions — step by step.
I am available for brief coordination calls with you or your client to ensure the custody plan and the estate documents are properly aligned. If a trust names a co-trustee who will need hardware wallet access, that needs to be addressed in both documents — and I can help bridge that gap.
You refer a client with bitcoin to me directly. I engage with the client independently — a separate advisory relationship with its own scope and fees. The client experience is seamless: they receive specialist custody guidance from a credentialed expert while remaining your estate planning client. I coordinate with you as needed, and I do not expand my scope into your domain.
Bitcoin is appearing in more estates every year — and most practicing estate attorneys have had no formal training in the custody mechanics that determine whether bitcoin is accessible or permanently lost at death. This program provides what attorneys need to know: the vocabulary, the framework, and the practical guidance to serve clients who hold bitcoin.
The program is accessible to attorneys with no prior technical background. No bitcoin ownership or technical expertise is assumed. The goal is practical competence — not technical mastery — so that you can ask the right questions, recognize custody risk in a client's situation, and know when to bring in a specialist.
Stan Reeves is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Auburn University — an academic appointment that reflects decades of contributions to his field at a Power Five research university.
Stan's practice is exclusively bitcoin — not "crypto." His positioning is deliberate: bitcoin presents a unique and specific set of custody and inheritance challenges that are distinct from other digital assets, and he has built his expertise precisely in that domain.