Digital inheritance glossary
Twelve terms used in Indian digital inheritance and in Legatus, each defined so it can be read on its own. Three of them — verified transition, nominee key exchange and the 72-hour security hold — name mechanisms specific to Legatus that have no established definition elsewhere.
Verified transition
The Legatus release process: two of a vault owner’s three nominees confirm the owner’s death independently, an administrator reviews an uploaded death certificate, and a 72-hour hold elapses before the vault unlocks. A verified transition deliberately requires more than one person and more than one kind of evidence.
Nominee key exchange
The mechanism by which a Legatus vault key reaches nominees without ever being shared with them in advance. Each nominee generates an RSA-2048 key pair, and the vault key is encrypted separately against each nominee’s public key. No nominee holds anything readable until a verified transition completes.
72-hour security hold
A mandatory delay between the point at which a Legatus vault release is approved and the point at which nominees can read its contents. The hold exists so that a mistaken or fraudulent release attempt has a window in which it can be noticed and stopped by a living vault owner.
Nominee
In Indian law, a person authorised to receive or deal with an asset or a right on the death of its holder. A nominee is a receiver, not an owner: nomination does not transfer ownership and does not displace legal heirs. Section 14 of the DPDP Act, 2023 extends nomination to personal data rights.
Legal heir
The person entitled to inherit a deceased person’s property under a will, or under succession law where there is no will. A legal heir may be a different person from the nominee named on an account, and where the two differ, entitlement follows the heir rather than the nominee.
Executor
The person appointed in a will to administer an estate: gathering assets, settling debts and distributing what remains to the beneficiaries. In Legatus, Executor is also one of three nominee roles, and holding that role in a vault does not by itself make someone the executor of an estate.
Succession certificate
A document issued by an Indian civil court establishing who is entitled to a deceased person’s debts and movable securities where there is no will. A succession certificate proves entitlement to an asset. It does not produce the password, private key or passphrase needed to reach a digital one.
Data Principal
The term used by India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 for the individual whose personal data is being processed. Section 14 of the Act gives a Data Principal the right to nominate someone to exercise their rights under the Act in the event of death or incapacity.
Zero-knowledge
An architecture in which the service provider cannot read the data it stores, because encryption and decryption happen on the user’s device with a key the provider never receives. In a zero-knowledge system a server breach exposes ciphertext, and the provider cannot comply with a demand to decrypt.
Dead man’s switch
A mechanism that acts when a person stops responding: if the owner fails to check in within a set period, the system takes a predetermined action. Most consumer implementations release on a timer alone. Legatus uses check-ins only to raise an alert, and requires human confirmation before any release.
Seed phrase
A sequence of words, usually twelve or twenty-four, that encodes the private keys to a cryptocurrency wallet. Anyone holding the seed phrase controls the wallet completely. Because it is both the sole means of access and a bearer credential, it is the single hardest asset to bequeath safely.
Master vault key
The AES-256-GCM key that encrypts a Legatus vault’s contents. It is generated in the browser, encrypted under a key derived from the owner’s passphrase with PBKDF2 at 310,000 iterations, and encrypted separately for each nominee. Legatus stores only these encrypted forms, never the key itself.