This is actually one of the prime use cases for OP_CTV.

As Greg points out, it can be useful to have an automatic clawback period mechanism if an inheritor tries to claim inheritance and you are not dead yet.

But you can go a bit further. Let's say you have 100 BTC that you want to bequeath your children. CTV makes it easy to set it up such that your progeny could get time release bitcoin (e.g., an annuity of 1 BTC a month).

You could also do this by directly creating 100 HTLC outputs with 1 BTC each revocable to you, and different locktimes, but there are some critical drawbacks with such an approach.

One such drawback is knowing when the tax obligation is due. You can't prove to the government that you didn't also receive a private key allowing you to spend at will as a part of the estate. However, with CTV you can prove that the annuity is set up correctly, and defer your tax obligation until the annuity payment is received.

If you have multiple inheritors and want to instead do some multisig scheme, there are similar drawbacks, but now added concerns that some of the inheritors will conspire against the others.


Ready for the galaxy brain....


CTV also would enable the spender to set up sub-inheritence schemes, to cover the case where one of the inheritors also "dies in the same car crash". You can specify a different redemption path if they don't claim their payment. At some point, you might want a will executor of last resort, like a law firm.