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Guest post by Robert Webster, senior associate at Maguire Family Law
Webster: Crypto is no longer niche for family lawyers
Cryptocurrency has become a recurring feature in high-net-worth divorce cases, yet the law is only just beginning to catch up, creating a complex environment for family lawyers.
Practitioners are now tasked with guiding clients through disputes involving digital wealth, balancing practical constraints with expectations while developing strategies to deal with assets that are often hidden and volatile.
The focus is not on becoming a blockchain expert, but on understanding the fundamentals of how cryptocurrency should be dealt with in financial remedy proceedings.
The rise of hidden crypto assets
In recent years, digital assets have become a familiar feature in divorce settlements. Their decentralised and private nature make them harder to detect and value than traditional assets.
Family lawyers increasingly encounter situations where clients suspect former partners of moving funds into crypto or converting cash into digital tokens to obscure wealth. Tracing these assets can be significantly harder than conventional investments, requiring careful investigative work.
Disclosure gaps and the legal grey areas
Disclosure remains a key challenge. Form E, the standard financial disclosure form, does not explicitly ask about digital assets, leaving room for accidental omissions or deliberate concealment.
A recent landmark case, Culligan v Culligan [2025] EWFC 1, highlights the growing significance of cryptocurrency in high-value divorce cases. The court dealt with a £20m Bitcoin fortune, originally purchased for £10,000, alongside undeclared crypto holdings of £371,000 revealed mid-proceedings.
This illustrates that undisclosed crypto can have substantial legal and financial consequences, reinforcing why family lawyers must be proactive in uncovering and addressing digital assets during disclosure.
While the courts expect full and frank disclosure, the reality is often complex and labour intensive. Even when disclosure is made, any lack of understanding can create uncertainty for practitioners advising clients and negotiating settlements.
Valuation, tracing, and cross-border complexity
Once disclosed, tracing digital assets is manageable, but only if records are complete. The task becomes harder when assets are split across exchanges and storage methods or stored abroad.
Valuation adds another layer of difficulty with the volatility of cryptocurrency markets leading to material fluctuations in value during proceedings. In some cases, we have seen values fluctuate by as much as 30% between the time of preparing a schedule of assets, to the day of a hearing itself resulting in implications for settlement proposals and offers.
Helpfully, the courts have become mindful of this and in some cases have been known to fix a valuation date, use averaged pricing, or make adjustments via lump-sums to consider these fluctuations.
International holdings can add further complexity, particularly where jurisdictions are slow to comply with disclosure or enforcement orders.
Given these difficulties, we are seeing greater reliance on forensic investigators and digital asset specialists. These experts play a valuable role in identifying undeclared holdings, analysing blockchain activity, and providing evidence to the court, often on a single joint expert basis.
However, where digital wealth has been deliberately concealed or secured in ways that prevent access, tracing may ultimately reach a dead end. Managing client expectations around these limitations is just as important as pursuing investigative avenues.
The need for legal reform
In June 2023, the Law Commission published its final report on digital assets, recommending that the law should explicitly recognise a ‘third category’ of personal property to capture assets such as crypto-tokens that do not fit neatly into traditional classifications of ‘things in possession’ or ‘things in action’.
The commission stressed the importance of flexibility, allowing courts to apply and develop the category as new forms of digital assets emerge. Following this, the proposed Property (Digital Assets etc) Bill will formally recognise crypto as a distinct form of property.
For family lawyers, this is significant: it confirms that digital assets can be the subject of disclosure, valuation and enforcement orders as with traditional property.
Once enacted, the legislation will provide a more settled framework and may prompt updates to standard disclosure forms, ensuring cryptocurrency and other digital assets are properly identified and consistently dealt with in financial remedy proceedings.
Additionally, there would be a huge benefit to additional training being provided to solicitors, members of the Bar and the judiciary, given the growing prevalence of cryptocurrency in divorce.
All family law professionals need to be equipped with the knowledge required to make informed decisions in complex cases involving digital assets. Beyond domestic reform, better mechanisms for cross-border cooperation will likely be essential as digital wealth continues to transcend geographical boundaries.
For family lawyers, the message is clear: crypto is no longer niche. Those who build confidence in handling these assets will be best placed to guide clients through the next wave of financial remedy disputes.
While the legal framework is in the process of catching up, practitioners can mitigate risk by asking the right questions early, recognising potential red flags, and engaging appropriate expertise when needed.
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