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would it be possible to program a smart contract tied to the key owner's death in some provable way, in order to release a key retrieval mechanism to their heir?

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I suppose you could surgically implant a private key inside your body that could be used to decrypt a cache of your other or private keys. It'd have to be somewhere that can't be accessed without killing you, though.

Torture you to reveal the secret location and in the process kill you to get the private key. Nice idea.

since smart contracts are turing complete, you could easily write a "dead mans switch" contract that requires check in, say, every 30 days.

the contract could be written such that if two or more checkins in a row are missed, then the assets can be withdrawn by any authorized users.

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