The BlockWill Booklet
Your Life’s Work Deserves Protection.
Secure your legacy. Ensure peace of mind.
A comprehensive estate planning platform providing personal harmony by offering a single, secure, secret place for all your assets - and ensuring failsafe legacy transfer to your loved ones.
Digital Estate Planning & Case Studies
What BlockWill is
A fail-safe legacy transfer
BlockWill is a state-of-the-art digital estate planning platform that ensures fail-safe legacy transfer of information about all your assets to your loved ones when you’re no longer around.
A privacy-first platform where information about all your asset classes - real estate ownership records, bank accounts, online investments, private equity, intellectual property, cryptocurrency - stays protected from being unclaimed and lost.
BlockWill ensures that your legacy is preserved and reaches the right people at the right time, as per your wishes.
The three pillars
Single, secure, secret - built to last
Three tools work together to capture your wishes, hold them safely, and deliver them faithfully.
Secure Vault
An unbreakable digital safe where you store sensitive information about all your assets - ownership documents, location of assets, and access credentials. A single, secure, secret place which only you can access while you’re alive, sealed until the conditional triggers you set are met.
DigiWish
Our flagship tool, documenting your wishes about what should happen with your assets and who should inherit them - in what proportion and under what conditions. It inventories every asset assigned to beneficiaries, serving as evidence of your intent on blockchain and a template to help your lawyer prepare a legally compliant will.
VaultRelay
A secure delivery mechanism that transfers your vault’s contents to your designated loved ones when the triggers you set are activated. Both manual and automated triggers ensure fail-safe transfer of your legacy to the right people, verified and intact, at the right time - without any leakage of information.
The security model
Military-grade security, zero knowledge
BlockWill is designed so that your most sensitive information stays readable only by the people you choose - protected by the same standards trusted to guard national secrets.
Zero-Knowledge
A privacy-first architecture so that nobody - not even BlockWill’s team - can see your private information. Your data gets encrypted in your system first before it reaches BlockWill servers. The system proves your data exists without ever knowing what it is, like a bank vault where even the manager has no key.
Military-Grade Encryption
Your data is scrambled using the same code-breaking-resistant technology that governments use to protect national secrets. Even the world’s most advanced computers would take millions of years to crack it, keeping your sensitive information completely unreadable to anyone except those you’ve authorised.
Hardware Security Key
A specialised physical device that stores and manages your encryption keys. Unlike regular software, it’s tamper-proof - if someone tries to break into it physically, it destroys the keys inside. The same security trusted by the most sophisticated professionals in technology, government, and military sectors.
Smart Contracts
Self-executing digital agreements that automatically carry out your wishes when specific conditions are met. Even if your designated human executor fails to act, our smart protocols work like an automated executor - releasing your assets to your beneficiaries exactly as instructed, without anyone needing to manually approve the transfer.
The lessons
Eight legacies the world watched unravel
History’s most accomplished people built extraordinary fortunes and lost control of them in death. Each story below is a different failure - no will, no documentation, no access - and each one BlockWill was built to prevent.
Case Study #1 - United States
Martin Luther King Jr.
Nonviolent Baptist pastor leading the US civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. (died April 1968, age 39) left no will, creating 50+ years of ongoing litigation among his children.
The three surviving children became equal shareholders in Martin Luther King Jr. Estate Inc. - a corporate structure that proved a “recipe for deadlock.” In 2008, his daughter Bernice and son Martin III sued their brother Dexter over estate management. In 2014, the brothers sued sister Bernice over King’s Nobel Peace Prize medal and Bible. Former President Jimmy Carter served as mediator.
The family has been “publicly estranged at various points” while fighting over their father’s legacy of nonviolent social change.
If Martin Luther King Jr. had BlockWill, its governance features could have established clear decision-making protocols for estate management - preventing the deadlock that plagued this civil rights icon’s legacy.
Case Study #2 - United States
Howard Hughes
Reclusive billionaire aviator, Hollywood producer, industrialist. Howard Hughes (died April 1976, age 70) left the most expensive estate litigation in American history.
His $2.5 billion fortune - equivalent to $55 billion today - attracted over 40 “wills” submitted by claimants, including the infamous “Mormon Will” allegedly leaving $156 million to gas station attendant Melvin Dummar. A seven-month trial ultimately proved the Mormon Will a forgery.
Without any valid testament, Hughes’s empire eventually passed to 22 distant cousins he likely never met. Final settlement took 34 years, concluding in 2010.
If Howard Hughes had BlockWill, VaultRelay’s conditional release mechanism would have ensured his actual intentions were documented and released upon verified death - while blockchain immutability would have made forgery impossible.
Case Study #3 - United States
Prince Rogers Nelson
Visionary, genre-blending Minneapolis music icon. Prince Rogers Nelson (died April 2016, age 57) left behind a $156 million estate with zero documentation of his wishes. The musician who famously controlled every aspect of his career lost all control in death.
Within three weeks of his passing, 700 people claimed to be heirs, and 45 individuals filed formal petitions asserting inheritance rights. Minnesota intestacy law divided the estate among his sister Tyka and five half-siblings - relatives Prince had varying relationships with. The estate burned through $600,000 monthly in administrative costs, with one law firm billing $440,000 in a single month. After six years of litigation and approximately $100 million in taxes and fees, the estate finally settled in 2022.
If Prince had BlockWill, DigiWish would have allowed him to clearly designate beneficiaries and specify distribution percentages - while Secure Vault would have protected his unreleased music catalog with encrypted access instructions for designated heirs.
Case Study #4 - United States
Matthew Mellon
Banking heir turned early high-stakes cryptocurrency investor. Matthew Mellon (died April 2018) owned $500 million in XRP cryptocurrency stored on wallet devices with no access instructions documented.
His outdated will didn’t mention cryptocurrency. The estate lost over 50% of its value during the three years required to locate wallet keys and negotiate with Ripple for access. Twenty-four entities filed claims; years of unfiled tax returns compounded problems.
If Matthew Mellon had BlockWill, Secure Vault’s encrypted asset documentation and VaultRelay’s conditional release of access credentials to his family members would have preserved hundreds of millions in value.
Case Study #5 - United Kingdom
Princess Diana
Beloved “People’s Princess” and compassionate global humanitarian. Princess Diana (died August 31, 1997, aged 36) activated her 1993 will and Letter of Wishes, which allocated 75% of jewelry and chattels to Princes William and Harry when they are 25 years of age, and 25% to 17 godchildren and butler Paul Burrell.
In late 1997, executors - her mother Frances Shand Kydd and sister Lady Elizabeth McCorquodale - secured a court variance, delaying the princes’ inheritance to 30 years of age and limiting godchildren and butler to one item each, overriding Diana’s wishes. Princes William and Harry had to wait until age 30 (and not 25 as Diana wanted) to receive their inheritance.
If Princess Diana had BlockWill, DigiWish’s blockchain authenticity corroborating asset distribution intentions would have ensured Diana’s specific wishes were honoured.
Case Study #6 - France
Pablo Picasso
Revolutionary modernist painter reshaping 20th century art. Pablo Picasso (died April 8, 1973, aged 91) did not write a will leaving over 45,000 artworks, properties, and cash/gold valued at $100–260 million (up to $1.1 billion estimates). His heirs - widow Jacqueline Roque, legitimate son Paulo, and illegitimate children Claude, Paloma and Marina - faced French intestacy laws recognizing all children equally.
Post-death, cataloguing of thousands of artworks took 3–5 years with 19 lawyers costing $30 million in fees. Disputes also raged over assets and intellectual property rights. Settlement reached in 1979 after 6 years; legitimate son and widow received the majority of the inheritance, with illegitimate children receiving minor shares.
If Pablo Picasso had BlockWill, DigiWish’s asset inventory feature would have organized the massive collection - while VaultRelay would have released access to specific works based on Picasso’s specified distributions to specified heirs.
Case Study #7 - India
Dhirubhai Ambani
Self-made founder of Reliance, architect of an Indian corporate empire. Dhirubhai Ambani (died July 2002, age 69) founded Reliance Industries and became India’s first-generation billionaire, yet died without any will or succession plan for his $17+ billion empire. Sons Mukesh and Anil Ambani engaged in bitter public warfare from November 2004, with disputes over ownership, decision-making, and strategic direction.
Dhirubhai’s wife Kokilaben brokered a 2005 split: Mukesh received petrochemicals and refining (the cash-generating core); Anil received telecommunications and power. By 2020, Anil had declared “net worth zero” while Mukesh became Asia’s richest man worth $100+ billion.
If Dhirubhai Ambani had BlockWill, DigiWish’s business succession features would have established clear governance, voting rights, and asset allocation - preventing the destruction of half the family’s wealth.
Case Study #8 - Australia
Robert Holmes à Court
Australian corporate raider dubbed “the great acquirer.” Robert Holmes à Court (died September 1990, age 53) was Australia’s first billionaire and a trained lawyer who died without a valid will. Under Western Australia’s Administration Act, his $400–800 million estate was divided one-third to widow Janet and two-thirds equally among four children.
No written guidance existed for managing complex corporate structures including his company - Heytesbury Holdings. One son sold his stake in 2000 to pursue independent ventures, causing family tensions.
If Robert Holmes à Court had BlockWill, DigiWish’s business succession documentation would have provided continuity instructions for the corporate empire.
The throughline
A family who deserved better
Behind every lost wallet, frozen account, and disputed estate is a family who deserved better.
BlockWill was founded on a simple belief: protecting your legacy should be as natural as building it. Whether it’s cryptocurrency, real estate, investments, or family offices, your life’s work deserves a plan as comprehensive as the wealth you’ve created.
Let these stories be lessons - secure your legacy today.
Secure your legacy. Ensure peace of mind.
A single, secure, secret place for all your assets - and failsafe legacy transfer to your loved ones, exactly as you wish.
Begin with BlockWillThis booklet is educational and is not legal advice. BlockWill is a digital inheritance infrastructure provider, not a legal services firm. Case studies are drawn from publicly reported accounts. DigiWish documents are proof of intent, not a substitute for a will drafted under your jurisdiction.