Family
Jul. 1, 2026
Dividing the invisible: Cryptocurrency, digital assets and the new frontier of California family law
California family courts, long governed by predictable rules for dividing community property, now face cryptocurrency and other digital assets that introduce extreme volatility, complex valuation timing issues, and heightened disclosure challenges, requiring judges to apply established doctrines on equal division, fiduciary duties, and market-versus-effort-based appreciation to blockchain-based assets that may be actively traded, difficult to trace, or hidden behind private keys.
Tenny C. Rostomian-Amin
Tenny C. Rostomian-Amin, Esq. handles family law matters, especially those involving intricate custody issues and complex martial estates.
For decades, California family courts have divided the same categories of community property: homes, bank accounts, retirement plans, brokerage portfolios, family businesses and the occasional valuable piece of personal property. The rules governing division of those assets are familiar, predictable and largely developed through generations of case law.
Cryptocurrency has changed that.
Today, family law practitioners increasingly encounter marital estates contain...
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