Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Tracing definition

What does Tracing mean? Tracing is the evidential and analytical process used to identify trust property, or its value, as it moves from one asset into another, so a claimant can assert a proprietary claim to the substitute or proceeds. It is not a remedy, but a method of proof developed by case law rather than statute. Lawyers distinguish tracing from following: following tracks the same asset; tracing identifies its product or substitute. In England & Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland, both common law tracing (into identifiable unmixed assets) and equitable tracing (into substitutes and mixed funds) are recognised, supporting claims to...

Cryptoassets in Family Financial Proceedings: Legal Status, Tax, Disclosure, Tracing, Valuation, Preservation, Enforcement and Payment for Legal Services (England and Wales)

Published by a LexisNexis Family expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note

This Practice Note examines the treatment of cryptoassets such as Bitcoin in family proceedings, together with an outline of how cryptocurrencies operate and their legal and tax treatment. It also covers how these assets are approached within such proceedings, including Tracing and Disclosure, Valuation, expert evidence, and measures for Preservation and enforcement.

Cryptoassets first appeared in 2009 with the emergence of Bitcoin, yet there is no single, commonly accepted definition.

Law Society guidance, produced in collaboration with Tech London Advocates and the Society for Computers & Law, points to distributed ledger technologies (DLT) as ‘a group of technologies that use different techniques and structures to store, synchronise and maintain a shared ledger of digital records across a network of computing centres’. That guidance uses ‘cryptoassets’ to describe any asset ‘represented digitally on a DLT platform’, and also refers to the term ‘virtual assets’.

In family law, the most commonly encountered cryptoassets are exchange tokens such as Bitcoin, often grouped under ‘cryptocurrency’. Other forms include:

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as unique digital collectables;
utility tokens;
security tokens; and
stablecoins, pegged to the value of a...

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David Salter

David Salter has enjoyed a varied career in family law with over 45 years’ experience. He served as National Head of Family Law at Addleshaw Goddard and, subsequently, as Joint National Head of Family Law at Mills & Reeve, retiring in 2018.From 1997-1999, David was Chairman of Resolution, also acting as the first Chairman of Resolution’s Accreditation Committee. He subsequently became President of the International Academy of Family Lawyers from 2010 to 2012, having previously served as the Academy's European Chapter President.He has sat in various part-time judicial posts since 1985 sitting regularly as a deputy High Court judge and Recorder in the Family Court until March 2022. He now conducts private financial dispute resolution appointments.David was one of the original members of the Family Procedure Rules Committee which framed the 2010 Rules, serving a ten-year term from 2004 to 2014.He is a...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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