Electronic Wills: What the Law Commission Is Proposing

Can you currently make an electronic will?

No. Under the current law — the Wills Act 1837 — a will must be a physical document, signed with a wet-ink signature, in the physical presence of two witnesses who also sign in your presence.

There is no provision for electronic signatures, digital documents, or remote witnessing. If you create your will online (as many people now do, including through GetWill), the document must still be printed, signed on paper, and physically witnessed.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, temporary legislation allowed wills to be witnessed by video call. Those provisions have since expired. There is currently no permanent equivalent.

What has been proposed?

The Law Commission's draft Wills Bill — published in May 2025 as part of its report Modernising Wills Law — expressly provides for electronic wills to be formally valid in England and Wales for the first time. The draft Bill has not yet been introduced to Parliament, and there is no guarantee it will be enacted. But it represents the most detailed proposal for electronic wills that England and Wales has seen.

The draft Bill would not create a separate legal category for electronic wills. Instead, it would treat paper and electronic wills as equals: both "wills" under the same Act, subject to the same core requirements. An electronic will could alter, revoke, and revive a paper will, and vice versa.

The difference is that electronic wills would need to meet one additional formality requirement — Requirement F — on top of the five requirements that apply to all wills.

How would electronic wills work?

The five core requirements (all wills)

Under the draft Bill, every will — whether paper or electronic — would need to satisfy these requirements:

• Requirement A — the will must be in writing
• Requirement B — the will must be signed by the testator (or by someone directed to sign on their behalf)
• Requirement C — the signature must indicate an intention for the will to have effect
• Requirement D — the will must be signed in the presence of two or more witnesses
• Requirement E — those witnesses must sign and attest the will in the presence of the testator

These restate and consolidate the existing rules from the 1837 Act, with some modernisation of language.

The additional requirement for electronic wills

Requirement F would require that a reliable system is used. The system would need to do three things:

1. Link each signature to the person who signed — so that the identity of the testator and witnesses can be verified
2. Identify the will so it can be distinguished from any copies — establishing a single authoritative version
3. Protect the will against alteration or destruction by anyone other than the testator or someone authorised by them

This requirement is designed to address the obvious risks of electronic documents: that they can be easily copied, altered, or deleted without trace. A reliable system would need to prevent this.

Electronic signatures

For electronic wills, "signature" would mean an electronic signature as defined by the Electronic Communications Act 2000. This is a broad definition — it would not require a specific type of technology. It could include typed names, digital certificates, biometric signatures, or other forms of electronic authentication, provided they meet the reliability requirements.

Remote witnessing by video

For electronic wills, "presence" would include presence by means of visual transmission — in other words, video call. This would mean that a testator could sign their electronic will while their witnesses watch and sign remotely, each from a different location.

This would be a permanent version of what was temporarily allowed during the pandemic. It recognises that requiring everyone to be in the same room is not always practical and that technology can provide adequate safeguards.

What systems would qualify?

The draft Bill would give the Secretary of State power to make regulations identifying or describing systems that are — or are not — reliable for the purposes of Requirement F.

However, this power would not need to be exercised for electronic wills to be valid. Even without regulations, an electronic will could be valid if the system used meets the three criteria set out in Requirement F.

In practice, if the Bill is enacted, we would expect regulations to eventually identify specific platforms, standards, or technologies that qualify. This would provide certainty for consumers and the legal profession.

What about wills created online today?

Services like GetWill already create wills digitally — the will is drafted online, reviewed by a solicitor, and delivered as a digital document. But under the current law, that digital document must be printed and signed on paper to be legally valid.

This will remain the case unless and until the draft Bill is enacted and comes into force. Even then, the specific systems that meet Requirement F would need to be established (either by regulation or by practice).

So for now, and for the foreseeable future, you should continue to print and sign your will on paper, with two witnesses physically present.

Why does this matter?

The introduction of electronic wills matters for several reasons:

Accessibility

Not everyone can easily arrange for two witnesses to be physically present. People who are elderly, unwell, in hospital, or living in remote areas may find it genuinely difficult to comply with the current formality requirements. Electronic wills with remote witnessing remove that barrier.

Security

Paper wills can be lost, damaged, or destroyed — accidentally or deliberately. A will stored in a reliable electronic system is potentially more secure than a document kept in a drawer at home. The requirement for the system to protect against unauthorised alteration or destruction builds in safeguards that paper simply cannot offer.

Modernisation

The law should reflect how people actually live and work. Most legal and financial transactions are now conducted electronically. Wills are one of the last areas of law that still require a physical document and wet-ink signature. Bringing wills into the digital age is overdue.

Fraud prevention

Requirement F's insistence on linking signatures to signers and protecting against alteration would, in some respects, be stricter than the current rules for paper wills. A paper will can be witnessed by anyone, and there is no built-in mechanism to detect tampering. An electronic will on a reliable system could actually be harder to forge.

How is GetWill preparing?

GetWill is actively building the infrastructure that a future electronic wills regime would require. Even before the law changes, these features improve the security and integrity of every will we produce today.

Document integrity

Every will PDF we generate is cryptographically hashed using SHA-256 at the moment of creation. This hash is stored on your will record and acts as a digital fingerprint: if even a single character of the document were altered, the hash would no longer match, and the tampering would be detectable. This directly supports the kind of tamper protection envisaged by Requirement F of the draft Bill.

Immutable archival storage

Final will documents are stored in tamper-proof cloud storage with time-based retention policies. Once uploaded, a document cannot be modified or deleted — not even by us — for the duration of the retention period. This satisfies the draft Bill's requirement that a reliable system must protect against unauthorised alteration or destruction.

Audit trail

Every significant action — from will creation and solicitor review through to PDF generation and download — is recorded in a comprehensive, hash-chained audit log. Each entry links cryptographically to the previous one, creating a verifiable chain of evidence. If any entry were altered or removed, the chain would break and the tampering would be immediately apparent.

What comes next

When the law is ready, GetWill will be positioned to add the remaining pieces: identity verification at signing, electronic signature integration, and video-witnessed execution ceremonies. The foundations — secure storage, document integrity, and a legally defensible audit trail — are already in place.

What should you do now?

The draft Bill has not yet been enacted. Until it is, the current rules apply: print your will, sign it with a pen, and have two witnesses physically present.

But if you are making a will today through GetWill, you are already well positioned. Your will is created digitally, reviewed by a solicitor, and protected by the same document integrity and archival systems that will underpin electronic wills when the law changes.

In the meantime, keep your signed paper original safe, and make sure your executor knows where to find it.