In short
A timelocked recovery key only becomes usable after a set time. You give that key to your heir. While you’re alive you keep pushing the deadline back, by “refreshing” the coins or moving them to a new wallet. It needs no company and no trusted keyholder, but it only works for Bitcoin, and a missed refresh opens the door early.
How it works
Bitcoin has a built-in feature called a relative timelock: a rule that says certain coins can only be spent by a given key once a set number of blocks has passed since the coins last moved. Modern wallet software combines this with a normal spending key using a scripting language called miniscript.
The result is a wallet with two ways to spend:
- Your normal path. Your own key (or keys) can spend at any time, as usual.
- The recovery path. Your heir’s key can spend, but only after the coins have sat unmoved for the period you chose.
Liana, the wallet that popularised this, describes the recovery path as a key “which can only spend the coins after the wallet has been inactive for some time” (Liana).
The refresh
The timer starts when coins arrive at an address, and restarts when you move them. So once in a while, before the deadline, you send your coins to yourself. Wallets that support this have a “refresh” button for it. It costs a transaction fee each time.
If you forget, nothing breaks for you. You can still spend as normal. But your heir’s key is now live too, and they could move the coins while you’re alive. That’s why the person holding the recovery key still needs to be someone you trust.
How long can the timer be?
A relative timelock, the kind Liana uses, is capped at 65,535 blocks. With a block roughly every ten minutes, that’s about 15 months (Wizardsardine). In practice people choose somewhere between six months and a year, and put the refresh in their calendar well before. Some wallets use a fixed activation date instead, which can lie further ahead; you postpone it by moving the coins to a new wallet before the date arrives.
Wallets that offer it
- Liana (desktop, free): built around recovery paths. You can add several, for example a family member after a year and a lawyer after 15 months.
- Nunchuk (mobile and desktop): has supported miniscript wallets, including timelocked recovery, since August 2025. Its paid inheritance plans now also offer an on-chain timelock option.
- Bitcoin Keeper (mobile): “Enhanced Vaults” can include an inheritance key that stays inactive until a set time passes; moving the funds to a new vault restarts the clock. Check which subscription tier includes it.
Check the current state of each before you rely on it. This is newer territory than ordinary wallets, and features change quickly.
Which hardware wallets can sign
Every device in the wallet has to understand miniscript. At the time of writing, according to Liana’s own list of signing devices:
- Ledger, with the Bitcoin app 2.1.0 or newer.
- BitBox02, firmware 9.15.0 or newer.
- Blockstream Jade, firmware 1.0.30 or newer.
- Coldcard, only with its experimental EDGE firmware.
- Specter DIY, 1.5.0 or newer.
Coldcard owners: check your seed first
In 2026 Coinkite disclosed that seeds generated on Coldcard firmware from 2021 to July 2026 could have weak randomness. It told owners to create a new seed on fixed firmware and move their funds, and said that “upgrading alone is not sufficient” (Coinkite). Sort that out before building any inheritance plan on top.
What your heir needs
- Their own recovery key: a hardware wallet or seed phrase, kept by them or somewhere they can reach.
- The wallet configuration (descriptor), because the recovery path is part of the wallet definition. Liana and similar wallets make a backup file for this.
- Instructions: which software to install, how to import the wallet, and that they have to wait until the timelock has passed.
Who it suits
A timelock is a good fit if you hold Bitcoin, you’re comfortable with wallet software, and you’d rather not involve a company or a keyholder. It’s a poor fit if you’ll forget the refresh, or if your heir would struggle to install software and import a wallet file. In that case, a paid service or a simpler sealed seed and letter may serve your family better.