2017 International Conference on Networks & Advances in Computational Technologies (NetACT) |20-22 July 2017| Trivandrum

SMART WILL
Converting the Legal Testament into a Smart Contract

Sreehari P , M Nandakishore, Goutham Krishna, Joshin Jacob and Shibu V.S

Department of Computer Science and Engineering Mar Baselios College Of Engineering and Technology, Nalanchira,
Trivandrum-15 ,Kerala

Abstract— A proposal is made to use blockchain technology Blockhain is not just about disintermediating the middle-
for drafting and probating ’wills’. Using blockchain technology man. In some cases, blockchain could disrupt markets and
for drafting and probating wills makes them tamper-proof, existing participants, while in others, it promises to help drive
secure, transparent. Furthermore it increases the speed of cost savings by reducing labour-intensive processes and elim-
probation without dealing with the tribulations caused by the inating duplicate effort. And in some instances, it can create
current system. new markets by exposing previously untapped sources of sup-
ply. Enabling a fundamentally new type of database technology
Keywords— Blockchain, Smart Contracts, IPFS
that can be distributed across organizations, blockchain creates
the foundation for problem solving or snatching opportunities
I. INTRODUCTION that have baffled current systems.
Blockchain is the underpinning technology that has created Blockchains transparency, security, and efficiency make it
the most popular cryptocurrency, the bitcoins. The heart of a particularly good choice for reshaping businesses that are
blockchains potential lies in the unique properties of a bogged down by inefficiencies, and for enabling new business
distributed database and how they can improve transparency, models based on distributed marketplaces and technology.
security, and efficiency. One of its technical features is that it Blockchain is not a cure all or a substitute for fixing broken
enables reliable transactions without a centralized management business processes, but we believe it is particularly well suited
system even if there are untrusted participants in the network. to address a variety of problems[5].
A smart contract, also known as a cryptocontract, is a piece of
software that deals with the transfer of digital currencies or B. Smart Contracts
assets between parties under certain conditions. A smart
contract once triggered works autonomously according to the Paper contracts can take weeks to travel around the globe,
conditions set on it. while digital documents are uncomfortably easy to forge. Is
there a way to automate transactions to make them smoother,
A will or testament is a legal document by which a person, more efficient, and more secure for all parties? Leaders are
expresses his or her wishes as to how their assets is to be looking at blockchain and smart contracts as a viable solution.
distributed at death. Today a will is written in a piece of paper [3]
and is highly vulnerable be tampered or even destroyed. Also
the legal complications in the processing of a will takes a lot of
time, paper work, etc. We put forth a new concept for drafting Smart contracts have taken blockchains from a financial
the will into the blockchain to keep it secure and tamper-proof transaction protocol to an all-purpose utility. They are pieces of
and making the process of probation faster when compared to software, not contracts in the legal sense, that extend
date. blockchains utility from maintaing a ledger of financial trans-
actions to automatically implementing conditions of multiparty
II. LITERATURE SURVEY agreements. Smart contracts are executed by a computer
network that uses consensus protocols to agree upon the series
A. Blockchain of actions resulting from the contracts content. The result is a
A blockchain is a distributed database working in the method by which parties can agree upon terms and trust that
concept of distributed consensus. It uses cryptography to allow they will be automatically executed, with less risk of being
each participant on the network to manipulate the ledger in a tampered with. Technology giants anticipate many applications
secure way without the need for a central authority. To ensure for blockchain-based smart contracts, from validating
reliability, when a new block is added to the previous block, a transactions to executing supply chain agreements between
little special process of solving a puzzle, called proof-of-work, various parties.
is needed and this puzzle is not easy. This is because this
process can prevent attackers from forging the blockchain on
their own. With the number of bitcoin transactions becoming Without blockchain this type of smart contract was not
larger and larger, discussion of blockchain applications other possible because parties to an agreement of this sort would
than those for currency has been thrust into the spotlight. This require maintaining separate databases. With blockchain and
is because the reliability of the technology has been maintained smart contracts all parties validate the outcome right away
even when it is put to use on a large scale. [1]. without the need for a third-party emissary. The blockchain
thereby provides a secure, legitamate, and smart contracts au-

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tomate approvals, calculations, and other transacting activities advanced their approach to drafting and probation of a Will
that are prone to lag and error. [3]. is rather subdued. Government systems are highly vulnerable
and is also a victim of corruption, biasing etc. Justice takes a
C. IPFS lot of time to be served even after the presence of a
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a distributed, inter sophisticated judiciary.
peer file system that connects all computing equipments with
The Will of a person is still written in a piece of paper which
the same system of files. In some ways, IPFS is identical to the
makes it highly vulnerable to being tampered with. Even if the
Web, but IPFS could be seen as a single BitTorrent swarm,
Will gets registered there is always a possiblity of a biased
exchanging objects within one Git repository. In other words,
official with whose help the Will can be tampered with or
IPFS provides a high through- put content-addressed block
storage model, with content- addressed hyper links. This forms even destroyed.
a generalized Merkle DAG, a data structure upon which one The probation of a Will approximately takes upto 6 months
can build versioned file systems, blockchains, and even a even if there are no objections. The legal complications,
Permanent Web. IPFS combines a distributed hashtable, an notary etc consume a lot of time. Any person can object or
incentivized block ex- change, and a self-certifying namespace. raise a challenge to a Will which leads to further
IPFS has no single point of failure, and nodes do not need to complications and inturn taking making years to serve justice.
trust each other[8]. The people really associated with the testator has to beat the
IPFS and the Blockchain are a perfect match! You can twinge of fighting for their rights bearing the pain of the sad
address large amounts of data with IPFS, and place an im- demise of the testator.
mutable, permanent IPFS hash into a blockchain transaction.
This timestamps and secures your content, without having to
place the data on the chain itself.[8]. B. Current System
Each file is given a unique digital fingerprint called a Creating a will gives you sole perspicacity over the dis-
cryptographic hash. IPFS removes redundancies across the tribution of your assets. It lets you decide how your assets,
network and tracks version history for every file. Each network
should be distributed after your death. If you have a business
node stores only content necessary , and some indexing infor-
mation that helps to figure out who stores what. Every file can or investments, your will can direct the smooth transition of
be identified by human-readable names using a decentralized those equities.If you have minor children, a will lets you
naming system called IPNS.[8] provide for their care. If you have children from a prior
marriage, even if they are adults, your will can dictate the
assets they receive. Creating a will also minimizes tensions
D. Ethereum among survivors. Relatives quarreling over your assets can
Ethereum is a public, open-sourced, blockchain-based dis- lead to chaos in the family. If you are charitably inclined, a
tributed computing platform that has smart contract function- will lets you direct your assets to the charity of your choice.
ality. Ethereum also provides a cryptocurrency token called Similarly, if you desire to leave your assets to an institution or
”ether”, which can be transferred between participants and is an organization, a will can see that your wishes are fulfilled.
used to compensate participant nodes for computations
performed.It provides a decentralized virtual machine, the A person dies intestate if he doest have a will. In such a
Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts case, the government oversees the distribution of your assets.
using a network of public nodes. Gas, an internal transaction The govenment however does not inherit your assets, but
pricing methodology, is used to prevent spamming the network rather distributes them according to a set conditions. Usually
and allocate resources equally to the incentive offered by the half of your estate going to your spouse and the other half
request.[7]. going to your children. Such a scenario can result in the events
Ethereum was proposed by Vitalik Buterin, a cryptocur- that negatively affect the family. This can create financial and
rency researcher and programmer. The system went live on 30 emotional difficulties, particularly if your spouse was counting
July 2015 but was later hard forked on July 20, 2016. This on the bulk of your assets to maintain his or her standard of
resulted in two separate blockchains: Ethereum and Ethereum living. Further aggravation arises when your children are
Classic. Ethereum Classic came into existence as the original minors, as the court will appoint a representative to look after
unforked blockchain, unifying members of the Ethereum
their interests. Tax considerations are another important issue
community who rejected this fork on metaphysical ground.
to consider, as a properly prepared will can minimize tax
liability. This is particularly important to people with large
III. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY estates. In the U.S., an estate tax return must be filed on
estates valued at $5,450,000 or more (as of 2016); but no
A. Problem Description federal estate tax is due if the estate is worth less than that
Even though our government and judiciary are very well amount. In India if one dies without a Will then the assets are
distributed equally among the legal heirs. The line of legal
heirs is clearly defined under Succession law. As per it the

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mother and children have equal share. So in your case the After confirming to draft the will, the created Smart con-
fixed deposit will be distributed equally among you and your tract will then be deployed into the blockchain where it is safe
mother. Now if there is a nominee in the account then bank and tamper-proof and its loaction in the blockchain is retrieved
will transfer the assets to the nominee after submitting death as a hash. Smart will manages another smart contract(Server
certificate. From nominee then it goes to legal heirs as per contract) that maintains a log of the public addresses and a
succession rule. If there is no nominee then you will have to mapping to the will(Smart contract hash), from that address.
produce a succession certificate from the court to claim the FD b) Update Will: The testator can update the will
amount. All this process takes a lot of time,(even years). according to his needs and then submit to save the new
updated will, which will then be deployed to the blockchain.
1) DISADVANTAGES OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM: The Dapp will get the public key from the local node in the
Will is stored as a hard copy in safes or a soft copy in a server browser and using it will check if a current will exists from the
and is highly vulnerable to get destroyed/tampered with either addr smart contract location mapping and will then the app
intentionally or otherwise. The processing of a will faces a lot will display an update will portal. The testator is authenticated
of legal complications, which involves a lot of time, even from the running local node in the browser and he gets
years. Writing a will involves money as a fee for registration, permission to edit his will. The smart contract location is
also a lawyer to deal with the legal issues. Probating a will retrieved and opend and the testator can update his
including transactions take a lot of time and money as it is all transactions. If he wants to update his written will then he can
carried out manually. retrieve the IPFS hash from the smart contract and then re-edit
his will, and will upload the new file, to get a new IPFS hash
which will be put into the smart contract replacing the old one.
C. Assumptions When he finally submits,
It is mandatory that everyone should hold a blockchain
account (say bitcoin account) and that details should be kept
by the government just like how an Adhaar card works in
India. An Adhaar card holder provides a bank account no.
along with other details, similarly a blockchain account should
also be given and all legal transactions must be via this
account should also be made mandatory.
The details of every person in the country should be
maintained in a log (like SSN in America) so that the person
can be searched for using the internet to get all his details
including the blockchain address he holds ,his existence etc.
This log should be made available to public by the
government. People can search for any other person by
Fig. 1.Illustration of how a will gets created
providing his details.

D. Working the new smart contract will be deployed and the newlocation
Initially the testator should have all the public address of will be updated into the server contract.
the people who he would like to give assets i.e. the
beneficiaries in handy.It can easily be obtained from the log
provided by the government like SSN. The testator should
access Smart will either via browsers that have an inbuilt
wallet to hold your public and private key that acts as a local
node in the blockchain or use any extensions like ”metamask”
that has the same functionality. Smart Will has 3 main phases
in its working:Create will, Update will and Probate will.
a) Create Will: When he submits the will and states
transactions to take place, the will, will be uploaded into
IPFS(Inter Planetary File System) and a hash to its location is
retrieved. A Smart contract is created which will have all his
transactions set and the retrieved IPFS hash ,all put under the
condition of deployment with the testators death. There exists
a death flag in the contract which will be set only after
checking with the government site to confirm his existence. Fig. 2.Illustration of how a will gets updated

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 c) Probate Will: Any person or benificiary can probate Probation of Will is faster compared to current system and the
a will by just inputting the public key of the testator and a necessity of a court can be disdained. Since blockchain
valid death certificate id. The Dapp will check if a Will for the technologyis used the will is totally tamper-proof and secure.
entered public address exists and then will trigger the smart Writing the will becomes easy with the smooth and very user-
contract thereby leading to all transactions to occur within friendly UI of smart will and the testator can be at peace as his
minutes and also a copy of the written Will, will be displayed assets will surely be inherited to the right hands.
on screen.After a Will has been probated if anyone inputs the
public key of the testator his Will, will be displayed as all
transactions had succesfully occured. V. FUTURE WORK AND CONCLUSION
In the app the benificiary inputs the public key of the A. Future Work
testator and which will be used to retrieve the smart con-tract
location from the server contract.The smart contract is a) Proposed Property Management System: The
retrieved and the inputted death certificate id is checked for government will initiate a project to put all the details of land
validity by the smart contract using oraclize to retrieve data in the country into the IPFS in the form of textual
from the government log and a boolean is returned and if the document.The government will then perform transactions to
boolean is yes the death flag in the smart contract is set the owners which contains the ipfs hash of their property
forever. All transactions will then takeplace accordingly and if which makes the root node of every property as the
a certain trasaction fails retriggering the contract will need not government.The government will then maintain a smart
verify death again as the death flag is permanantly set and the contract(server con-tract) which maintains a mapping between
transactions that had failed alone will be done again.The IPFS public addresses of people and the IPFS hash of their property.
hash will be returned to the Dapp. Dapp will then retrieve the The owner can now transfer his property to anyone he desires
contents of the will from the IPFS and display it in the UI. If thus transferring the ownership. The transfer of the property
the same public key is entered by any person the fact that Will can be authenticated by checking the root of the block chain
was probated will be shown and the copy of the written Will is thereby detecting frauds. If the owner of a property dies
displayed.
without a Will then the property will automatically be
transacted to the government address and then government can
transact to the legal hiers of that property.
b) Proposed System for handling Taxes: The
government should make a rule that all asset transactions
should be made using the blockchain account linked in Adhaar
inorder to be considered legal. Since blokchain is transparent
the government can monitor all transcations enables the gov-
ernment to check on tax payments.Furthermore a
smartcontract template can be made mandatory which
calculates and trans-fers tax to government address
autonomously.

B. Conclusion
The use of blockchain technology for drafting Wills is the
Fig. 3.Illustration of how a will is probated
best way to maintain security and faster probation of the
testament. The current system is very vulnerable to biasing
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION and corruption that most of the deserving heirs of assets do not
After the text edit has been completed, the paper is ready get them fast. Any person with the intention to hurt can easily
for the template. Duplicate the template file by using the Save intervene in the system and cause chaos. This leads to a long
As command, and use the naming convention prescribed by time in processing the will, due a lot of legal complications.
your conference for the name of your paper. In this newly For people with a lot of net worth having a proper will is
created file, highlight all of the contents and import your really necessary for the right inheritance of their assets as they
prepared text file. You are now ready to style your paper; use have a lot of rivals.
the scroll down window on the left of the MS Word Blockchain technology is a future technology and a
Formatting toolbar. Using Smart Will lets the government blockchain revloution is expected to occcur soon in the near
monitor all trans-actions done by the processing of will as future. The idea of distributed consensus is a proving to be a
blockchain is completely transparent. Thus the beneficiaries prime substitute to maintain security.The introduction of smart
cannot evade the land transaction fees or any other taxes. contract has set a fire across the contract market. People are

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opting to use a smart contract instead of a traditional contract
as it is pretty safe, tamper-proof and have a wide variety of
functionality.
Using Smart Will for drafting the Will ensures that the
Will gets probated faster and there is no need for any legal
com-plications or extra time for reference so that the
beneficiaries can be freed from the pain of fighting for their
rights bearing the pain

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