What to do when a Casa account holder dies
Contact Casa — 5-step process, 4 required documents, and standard request access: six months from the date the recipient requests access, during which casa notifies the owner and the owner may reject. enhanced verification (private client): no waiting period; casa reviews the death certificate manually and publishes no fixed turnaround. sovereign recovery with no designated recipient: as fast as the executor can assemble enough keys, or never if the keys are gone.
Casa Inheritance (no separate claims department -- a designated Recipient requests vault access in the Casa app; Private Client Enhanced Verification claims go through the app help or concierge feature)
After an account holder at Casa dies, accounts with beneficiary designations or trust ownership transfer to the designated recipients without probate. Solely-owned accounts require the estate's representative to contact Casa's Casa Inheritance (no separate claims department -- a designated Recipient requests vault access in the Casa app; Private Client Enhanced Verification claims go through the app help or concierge feature) with the proper legal authority documents.
Casa provides an online portal for initiating death claims, which can simplify the initial notification and document submission process. Claims can also be started by phone.
Death claim process
To file a claim after an account holder's death, here is what Casa requires:
Filing a claim
- The Recipient opens the Casa app, goes to the Inheritance tab, selects the deceased owner's vault, and taps "Request Vault Access"
- Casa requires no death certificate, no Letters Testamentary, and no proof of death to start the request -- it explicitly states none are needed
- A six-month verification period begins, during which Casa sends the vault owner a sequence of notifications giving them the chance to reject the request
- If the owner does not reject it, access is granted when the six months elapse; only then can the Recipient see the vault balance
- The Recipient then signs with the shared keys (their copy of the mobile key plus, on a 3-key vault, the previously pre-shared Casa Recovery Key) and moves the bitcoin to a destination they control
- The Recipient must have kept up the periodic key health checks throughout, or the shared keys may not be usable when the period ends
- The Recipient contacts Casa through the app's help or concierge feature and submits a death certificate for the vault owner
- Per Casa's Inheritance Terms, only a death certificate issued by a United States jurisdiction is accepted, and the Recipient represents that the documents provided are true and accurate copies
- Casa's team manually reviews the death certificate against the government-issued IDs both parties supplied at setup
- On approval the Recipient assumes control of the assigned vault or vaults with no six-month wait; Casa publishes no fixed processing timeline for this review
- Nothing in the Casa app helps here: an executor cannot request access to a vault they were never added to, and Casa cannot grant it
- The executor must locate the deceased's hardware devices and the Sovereign Recovery instructions (emailed by Casa at each new keyset, and cached in the app)
- Rebuild the vault in Sparrow Wallet 1.8.0 or later using all of the vault's public keys and current derivation paths from those instructions
- To sign, the executor needs enough private keys to meet the vault threshold assuming the Casa Recovery Key is unavailable -- two of three on a Standard vault, three of five on a 5-key vault -- typically from hardware devices or an exported mobile seed
- If too few keys survive, the bitcoin may be permanently unreachable. Casa holds only one key and cannot move funds on its own, and no probate order can compel a signature it cannot produce
Required Documents
- Standard Request Access process: no documents at all -- Casa states a death certificate and proof of death are not required to request vault access
- Enhanced Verification (Private Client, US residents): a death certificate issued by a United States jurisdiction, reviewed against the US government-issued IDs both parties provided at setup
- No Recipient designated: no documents help -- the executor needs the hardware devices, the Sovereign Recovery instructions, and enough private keys to meet the vault's signing threshold
- Casa does not request or accept Letters Testamentary, Letters of Administration, or a small estate affidavit on any path
What to know at this institution
The defining fact for an executor is that Casa is not a payer. Casa's Inheritance Terms state that Casa has no special relationship with or fiduciary duty to a member or their successors, that Casa will not confirm a user's identity, and that nothing in the terms indicates Casa maintains custody of any assets. There is no account to freeze, no balance to release, and no probate document Casa wants to see. On the standard path the six-month notification window substitutes for a death verification, which means the estate cannot be settled faster by producing court paperwork -- the clock is the mechanism. The only accelerator is Enhanced Verification, and it is available only to Private Client members who are US residents. Where no Recipient was ever designated, the estate's outcome rests entirely on whether the hardware devices and Sovereign Recovery instructions can be found. Inventory device locations in the estate plan; do not write down seed phrases or private keys for the executor.
How long the process takes at Casa: Standard Request Access: six months from the date the Recipient requests access, during which Casa notifies the owner and the owner may reject. Enhanced Verification (Private Client): no waiting period; Casa reviews the death certificate manually and publishes no fixed turnaround. Sovereign Recovery with no designated Recipient: as fast as the executor can assemble enough keys, or never if the keys are gone. The most common reason for delays is missing or incomplete documentation, so submitting everything upfront is the best way to keep things moving.
To process a claim, Casa needs Standard Request Access process: no documents at all -- Casa states a death certificate and proof of death are not required to request vault access, Enhanced Verification (Private Client, US residents): a death certificate issued by a United States jurisdiction, reviewed against the US government-issued IDs both parties provided at setup, No Recipient designated: no documents help -- the executor needs the hardware devices, the Sovereign Recovery instructions, and enough private keys to meet the vault's signing threshold, and Casa does not request or accept Letters Testamentary, Letters of Administration, or a small estate affidavit on any path. Death certificates and court documents must be certified copies—photocopies are not accepted.
Frequently asked questions
On the standard path, no -- and that is deliberate. Casa states that a Recipient does not need to provide a death certificate or proof of death to request vault access. Instead, the Recipient taps "Request Vault Access" in the Casa app and a six-month verification period begins, during which Casa sends the vault owner a sequence of notifications and the owner can reject the request. If no rejection comes, access is granted after six months. Casa does not ask for Letters Testamentary, Letters of Administration, or a small estate affidavit on any path. The single exception is Enhanced Verification, available only to Private Client members who are US residents: there the Recipient submits a death certificate -- which Casa's Inheritance Terms require to be issued by a United States jurisdiction -- and Casa's manual review replaces the six-month wait.
Six months on Standard, Standard Plus, and Premium memberships. The clock starts when the designated Recipient requests vault access in the Casa app, and it cannot be shortened by producing court paperwork -- the waiting period is the verification mechanism, not a queue. The Recipient cannot even see the vault balance until the six months elapse. Private Client members who are US residents can set up Enhanced Verification, which eliminates the waiting period in favor of Casa's manual review of a US-issued death certificate; Casa publishes no fixed turnaround for that review. Both the owner and the Recipient must keep completing periodic key health checks in the app, or the shared keys may not be usable when the waiting period ends.
Casa cannot help the estate, and no court order can force it to. Casa holds only one key (the Casa Recovery Key) in a multisig vault and cannot move funds by itself, and an executor cannot request access to a vault they were never added to. The estate's only route is Sovereign Recovery: locate the deceased's hardware devices and the Sovereign Recovery instructions that Casa emails at each new keyset, rebuild the vault in open-source software such as Sparrow Wallet 1.8.0 or later using the vault's public keys and derivation paths, and sign with enough private keys to meet the vault threshold -- two of three on a Standard vault, three of five on a 5-key vault -- assuming Casa's key is unavailable. If too few keys survive, the bitcoin is unreachable. The practical estate planning step is an inventory of where the hardware devices and the recovery instructions are kept, recorded in the estate plan.
No to all three. Casa's Inheritance Terms state that nothing in the terms indicates Casa maintains custody of any assets, that Casa has no special relationship with or fiduciary duty to a member or the member's successors, and that Casa will not confirm a user's identity. Casa is not a bank, exchange, or broker-dealer, so there is no FDIC or SIPC coverage on a vault, and there is no institutional insurance -- Casa never takes possession of the assets. What Casa does provide is one key in a multi-signature vault plus the software and the inheritance protocol around it. For an executor this reframes the whole task: there is no balance to claim and no institution to compel, only keys to assemble.
Casa's Casa Inheritance (no separate claims department -- a designated Recipient requests vault access in the Casa app; Private Client Enhanced Verification claims go through the app help or concierge feature) can be reached by email at help@team.casa for questions throughout the claims process.
Multiple Casa accounts may mean multiple claims. Some account types can be processed together, but others require their own documentation. Check with the Casa Inheritance (no separate claims department -- a designated Recipient requests vault access in the Casa app; Private Client Enhanced Verification claims go through the app help or concierge feature) to confirm what applies.
Sources
Data sourced from Casa primary sources (15 pages reviewed). How we research.
Casa Inheritance (no separate claims department -- a designated Recipient requests vault access in the Casa app; Private Client Enhanced Verification claims go through the app help or concierge feature)
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