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What happens to BTS when someone dies - INHERITANCE

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bytemaster:
I think an output that can be spent by one person 'before date X' and another 'after date X' would solve this.  You can program the wallet to auto renew this to keep it 1 year in the future.   If you die, then it becomes theirs.

luckybit:

--- Quote from: lakerta06 on February 20, 2014, 09:49:22 am ---Did anybody mention death and inheritance issue before on this forum? What happens to my BTS, PTS etc shares when I die, assuming noone else has my private keys?

I don't know if you have plans for this but here is my idea:

Add inheritance capability to Keyhotee. For example, I select an inheritor account for my belongings. If I do not make any transactions for an extended amount of time, all my belongings are transferred to the inheritor account.

What do you think?

--- End quote ---

Read my thread on economic allegiance systems. It addresses that and more at the Keyhotee level.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1745.0

In theory you could form a group and if one person dies or is inactive then all of their assets will slowly disperse to the group they designate at the rate they designate.

This is better than how it's being set up now where inactivity will result in your assets being slowly destroyed. While that is good for the network, it's not as good as inheritance.

Inheritance should be set up to go to any group, individual, or just people in your economic allegiance network in a specific order. The point is to give the user maximum control and it might be a good idea to allow for scripting here.


--- Quote from: Agent86 on March 16, 2014, 03:38:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: SuanBing on March 16, 2014, 03:01:46 pm ---make a wallet backup to your familly

--- End quote ---
It doesn't solve the problem.  You may have your spouse as your main beneficiary but if you give him/her instructions on how to access your wallet you could wake up one morning and your wallet is empty and you're getting served with divorce papers.  Divorces happen, family members argue over money and inheritences, and family members sometimes fight and have falling outs.  Much better to give the individual the control.

--- End quote ---

Scripting will be necessary. Additionally you will need multisig. If you're economically allied with a certain group of individuals and you set it to give all your assets to that group of individuals it would. You could determine the rate as well so that they don't get it all at once but slowly over the years.

You could use scripts to make sure they only get it under specific circumstances and set it up so they must supply verified proof of circumstances to a third party. So you could say to your children the social contract says you must get married and donate x% a year to charity to receive your inheritance. You could set the script up so that a specific fraction of x go to one of the charities on your list each year and the rest they can choose from.

A script would make it trivial. Economic allegiances could be in the form of scripts. Inheritances could be in the form of scripts. It's just a matter of using an easy language like Python so anyone can write these scripts or find a template. These scripts would be smart contracts enforced by the blockchain itself.

If the charities on the list for example have certain addresses or a Keyhotee ID which doesn't change then the inheritance script would include a dictionary or list. The list would determine the options that the person inheriting the funds could choose to donate to and once the donation is completed it would be on the blockchain and the the script would check and verify it was completed. Marriage could also be certified on the blockchain and a third party could sign it making it a completed task. Once they are both completed then the funds for that year would be released.

Each year the challenge for the participant would be to donate x% to a charity, it verifies on the blockchain, and the funds are released to them. You could even set it up so the list of charities is automatically updated according to the effectiveness of each charity in solving the real world problem. This would mean they'd get more inheritance funds for that year if they donate to the most effective charities, as points would be rewarded which would count toward their inheritance amount.

Bytemaster and Dan Notestein, if you're reading this please make it a priority to allow for us to use scripting in this way. C++ is not going to work for most of us, so Python or Ruby please. Let that hook into the C++ library.

Agent86:

--- Quote from: SuanBing on March 16, 2014, 03:01:46 pm ---make a wallet backup to your familly

--- End quote ---
It doesn't solve the problem.  You may have your spouse as your main beneficiary but if you give him/her instructions on how to access your wallet you could wake up one morning and your wallet is empty and you're getting served with divorce papers.  Divorces happen, family members argue over money and inheritences, and family members sometimes fight and have falling outs.  Much better to give the individual the control.

SuanBing:
make a wallet backup to your familly

Agent86:
I have some thoughts on this.  I agree with others that the most elegant solution is allow you to set up automatic transactions in the future to move shares to a family member or friend's address (programmable money?).

One difficulty is that this transaction can't work like a regular TaPOS transaction utilizing CDD because it auto-executes while you are completely offline.  You also can't let people just auto-transfer shares back and forth to prevent from getting hit with the 5% yearly inactivity fee.

But, I think if you treat auto-transferred shares like inactive shares it might still work.  Until the shares are actually actively transferred on-line by someone with the private key, they continue to lose 5% per year and lose all their coin days(voting rights).  They still pay all standard transaction fees.  You could even charge an additional 5% auto-transfer fee if you like (estate tax?)

I think if it is possible to do, it is definitely worth doing.  This is way easier than trying to set up a system where your friends and family can get your private keys after you pass away.  Maybe you give one part of the key to a family member or have another part with another friend or have the key in a safe deposit box or your lawyer's office has access to part of the key. It's way more effort and not worth the effort for a small amount of money and you can't quickly change the system you have set up if your situation changes.  Also, a lot of people in the world don't have convenient access to a safety deposit box at a trustworthy bank.  Deposit boxes can be seized and this reliance on banks and 3rd party trust is part of what we are trying to get away from.

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