[LiquidSky]

Elder abuse is certainly a real problem, but the guardianship/conservatorship system also does address a real problem: many seniors actually do become mentally unable to manage themselves.

You're worried about falsely being forced into a guardianship, but what happens if you actually do develop Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia and your family legitimately needs access to your assets to care for you? It's easy to say you'd just give them access before it gets really bad, but an insidious part of the problem is that someone suffering from such a decline either doesn't, or refuses to, recognize it happening.

[Symbiote]

Before she died, my grandmother couldn't remember where she'd hidden her most valuable jewellery.

She was an excellent card player 10 years before that, probably because she could recall most/all of the playing cards in the discard pile, so I'm sure she could have remembered a Bitcoin wallet passphrase — until the last few years.

[lxgr]

I’ve unfortunately seen that as well.

Paranoia is a common side effect of dementia, and I’ve seen lots of anguish and money (legal/bank fees) spent on recovering non-life-changing savings that were just too well hidden. At least there was a fallback option to get them back – crypto would have been permanently lost.

Finding a middle ground between security and availability is hard even as a healthy adult and only gets worse with age.