Are digital wills legally valid in the UK yet?
18 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
Short answer: no, not yet. You can write a will online, store it online and pay for it online. You still can't sign it online. The signing bit is where the law hasn't moved.
The rule is from 1837 and it's still the rule
Section 9 of the Wills Act 1837 wants a will in writing, signed by you, with two witnesses present at the same time who then sign it themselves. Writing means writing. A PDF with a typed signature, a scan, a video of you reading your wishes out, a note in your phone: none of those is a will in England and Wales, however clear your intentions were. Scotland has its own rules under the Requirements of Writing (Scotland) Act 1995, and they also want a proper signature.
The video witnessing rules have expired
During the pandemic the rules were temporarily relaxed so witnessing could happen over a video call. That concession ran from early 2020 and has now ended, so remote witnessing is no longer available. If your will was signed that way inside the window it remains valid, which is worth knowing if you dealt with it during lockdown and have never looked at it since.
Change has been recommended, not made
The Law Commission published its long-awaited report on wills in 2025, with a draft bill alongside it. It recommends allowing electronic wills through regulations with proper safeguards, scrapping the rule that marriage revokes a will, and lowering the age for making one to 16. Sensible, widely welcomed, and not law. A recommendation sits with government until someone finds parliamentary time for it, which can take years.
So what does an online will service actually give you?
A perfectly good will, once you've printed it, signed it in front of two witnesses and had them sign too. The online part is the drafting and the storage, not the execution. And the paper original still matters more than anything else: if the signed original can't be found after death, the law generally presumes it was deliberately destroyed, which means the estate can end up being dealt with as though there were no will at all. A photograph of a will is evidence, not a substitute.
The practical version of a digital will, today, is a properly signed paper one plus a clear digital record of where it is, who witnessed it, and what else your executor needs to know. The second half of that is the part almost nobody does, and it's the half that's currently legal.
Sorting this out for someone else? Make sure your family never has to.
Most of the time goes on finding out what the person had and who to call. Inherit Vault keeps that list for you: your accounts, pensions and policies, and where your will is kept. Only you can read it. Your executor gets it when it is needed.
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