Electronic Wills: Will Going Digital Stop Inheritance Disputes?

For nearly two centuries, the law of wills in England and Wales has been built around a remarkably simple piece of technology: paper.

A person writes or prints their will. They sign it. Two witnesses sign it. The original is kept somewhere safe. That basic framework derives from the Wills Act 1837.

The world surrounding it has changed almost beyond recognition. We bank online. We sign contracts electronically. We store photographs in the cloud. We manage investments on our phones. We can buy a house without ever meeting many of the professionals involved face to face.

Yet making a will remains largely an analogue exercise.

The Law Commission thinks it is time for that to change. In its Modernising Wills Law report, published in May 2025, it recommended replacing the Wills Act 1837 with a new Wills Act and specifically allowing electronic wills to be formally valid, subject to additional safeguards designed to make them safe and reliable.

But there is a rather more interesting question.

Will electronic wills reduce inheritance disputes?

Probably. A little.

But anyone expecting technology to bring an end to the family inheritance war is likely to be disappointed. Because most inheritance disputes are not really about paper. They are about people.

First: electronic wills are not here yet

What is actually being proposed?

Some inheritance disputes really could disappear

Consider the surprisingly mundane questions which can cause probate litigation.

• Where is the original will?
• Is this the final version?
• Was this page substituted?
• Is that really Dad’s signature?
• Was the document properly witnessed?
• Was this amendment made before or after execution?
• Why is the solicitor holding a copy but nobody can find the original?

A properly designed electronic system could provide considerably better evidence. Instead of examining ink, paper and handwriting, there could potentially be a reliable digital record.

Simplified visual explainer

What a secure digital audit trail might record

1. 1

   10.42 am — testator authenticated

2. 2

   10.47 am — final document opened

3. 3

   10.51 am — testator signed

4. 4

   10.54 am — witness one authenticated and signed

5. 5

   10.56 am — witness two authenticated and signed

6. 6

   10.57 am — document locked; no alteration since execution

Electronic wills might even be safer than paper in some respects. But that is where the easy part ends.

Because the computer cannot tell us why Dad left everything to Sarah

Suppose the electronic system establishes beyond any sensible doubt that a will is authentic. It proves that Dad signed it. It proves that two witnesses signed it. It proves that not a single byte has changed since execution.

Excellent. The will says: Sarah £1,000,000. James £0. Lucy £0.

James and Lucy are Dad’s children. Sarah is the woman who moved in with him two years before he died.

Now ask whether the electronic system has prevented an inheritance dispute. Of course it hasn’t. The questions simply change.

Did Dad have testamentary capacity? Did he understand what he was doing? Why did he exclude his children? Was Sarah influencing him? Who arranged the electronic will? Who selected the solicitor? Who controlled Dad’s laptop? Who knew his passwords? Was Sarah sitting beside him? Why did the will change six months before his death?

Technology may prove what was signed. It cannot necessarily prove why it was signed.

Inheritance wars are about families, not formats

Look at the cases in our Inheritance Wars series.

In McDaniel v Talbot, the problem was that a father had excluded his daughter after years of estrangement, subsequently reconciled with her — and never updated his will. An electronic will would not have repaired that gap between document and reality.

In Bond v Webster, the dispute concerned testamentary capacity and knowledge and approval against the background of a seriously ill father, four children and dramatically changed testamentary arrangements. Putting the will on a server would not have answered those questions.

In Rea v Rea, years of litigation followed allegations of undue influence surrounding a mother who left her house to the daughter who had cared for her. Electronic execution would not tell us whether gratitude ended and coercion began.

And in Clitheroe v Bond, the court had to consider whether the deceased’s beliefs about her daughter amounted to testamentary delusions which affected the disposition. There is no software update for that.

The recurring ingredients of inheritance litigation are family, money, death, memory and suspicion. Electronic wills remove none of them.

In fact, electronic wills may create new inheritance wars

Imagine this case.

Margaret is 87. Her eyesight is poor. She has some cognitive impairment but still uses an iPad. Her son David visits every day. David knows the passcode. He helps Margaret with her online banking. He manages her email. He arranges an electronic will. Margaret electronically signs it. David receives almost the entire estate. His sister Jane receives nothing.

The digital system conclusively proves that the electronic signature was applied using Margaret’s account and device.

Jane’s response is obvious: “But who was actually controlling the iPad?”

That may become the digital equivalent of one of the oldest questions in contested probate: who was in the room?

Who was behind the camera?

The Law Commission also recommends that, in the electronic-will context, presence should be capable of being satisfied through remote visual presence.

That is convenient. It also raises an obvious evidential problem.

A solicitor may see an elderly client on screen. The solicitor can see the client’s face and hear the answers. What the solicitor cannot necessarily see is the beneficiary sitting beside the computer; somebody standing behind the screen; a message appearing on another device; notes being held up; or somebody telling the testator what to say before the call begins.

A camera tells us what is inside its frame. Inheritance litigation is frequently about what happened outside it.

Undue influence will not go digital and disappear

This is particularly striking because the Law Commission’s wider reforms recognise that undue influence is already difficult to prove.

The Commission says the present evidential burden can inadequately protect vulnerable testators, because coercion commonly occurs behind closed doors and is often exercised by someone close to the person making the will. It therefore recommends allowing courts to infer undue influence where the evidence provides reasonable grounds for suspicion.

Electronic wills do not solve that problem. They may simply move the closed door — from the solicitor’s office to the testator’s laptop.

And then there is artificial intelligence

There is another complication which the Victorian draftsmen of the Wills Act understandably did not anticipate. We are entering an era in which technology can reproduce voices, faces, signatures, writing styles and increasingly convincing video.

That does not make secure electronic wills impossible. It makes authentication more important.

A future court may be less interested in “does that look like Dad’s signature?” and considerably more interested in: how was Dad’s digital identity authenticated? Who controlled the authentication device? What does the audit trail show? Can we prove this video is genuine? Was the document altered? Has the digital evidence itself been compromised?

The forensic handwriting expert may eventually acquire some new colleagues.

But digital evidence could be better evidence

None of this is an argument against electronic wills. Quite the opposite.

Properly implemented, they could create an evidential record which a traditional paper will simply cannot provide: identity verification; time and date; version history; witness authentication; document integrity; execution sequence; and perhaps other audit information.

Compare that with a paper will discovered in a drawer twenty years later. Two witnesses signed it. One has died. Nobody can find the other. The solicitor’s firm closed fifteen years ago. And nobody remembers what happened.

In that situation, digital evidence begins to look rather attractive.

Electronic wills may not prevent disputes. But they may give us better evidence with which to resolve them.

What is the “original” electronic will?

Paper has one useful characteristic: there can ordinarily be one identifiable signed original.

Digital documents behave differently. A perfect copy can be produced in seconds. So what happens when there are ten identical files? Which is the original will?

The Law Commission has recognised precisely this problem. Its proposed safeguards require the electronic original to be capable of being distinguished from copies and protected against unauthorised alteration or destruction.

That sounds like a technical issue. It is actually fundamental succession law — because another ancient probate question is: what happened to the original?

How do you tear up an electronic will?

We have already looked in Inheritance Wars at the remarkable case involving Carry Keats, the 92-year-old woman who tore most of her paper will and directed her solicitor to complete the destruction.

That raises a wonderfully modern question. What is the digital equivalent? Delete? But delete what? The local file? The cloud copy? The backup? The solicitor’s copy? The cryptographic record?

What if the testator presses delete but the system retains the file for disaster recovery? And how do we prove the testator intended “I revoke my will” rather than “I no longer want this file on my desktop”?

The medium changes. The law still has to establish intention.

The will may need to outlive the technology

Someone makes an electronic will at 45. They die at 95. The will has to remain secure and readable for 50 years.

Think about the technology you were using fifty years ago. Now imagine proving a will created using today’s technology in 2076. The company providing the platform may have disappeared. Its software may no longer exist. Encryption standards may have changed. File formats may be obsolete. Businesses may have merged. Servers may have moved. Passwords may have vanished.

Electronic wills therefore require something more ambitious than an electronic-signature platform. They require long-term digital preservation of an exceptionally important legal document.

So will electronic wills reduce litigation?

Disputes technology may reduce	Disputes technology will not remove
Lost originals	Testamentary capacity
Uncertainty over versions	Undue influence
Some execution disputes	Knowledge and approval
Some signature disputes	Estrangement and disappointed children
Some allegations of later alteration	Second families and cohabiting partners
Problems locating the will	Inheritance Act claims
Possibly some fraud	Promises about houses, farms and businesses
	Proprietary estoppel
	Arguments between executors
	Questions about lifetime gifts

And the oldest inheritance complaint of all: “that isn’t fair.” There is no reliable system capable of removing that one.

It may even make wills easier to make — and easier to change

If changing a will eventually becomes as straightforward as securely logging into an online system, testators may make changes more frequently.

That could be beneficial. It might prevent the McDaniel problem — the forgotten will which no longer reflects the family.

But it could also produce estates containing a much richer digital history: a 2019 will; a 2021 will; a 2022 amendment; a 2023 will; a January 2025 will; a March 2025 will; and a final will three weeks before death.

Then the litigation question becomes: why did it keep changing? The digital trail may provide the answer. Or it may provide the evidence from which the next inheritance dispute begins.

The real way to reduce inheritance disputes hasn’t changed

Electronic wills may improve the machinery. But preventing inheritance disputes still requires very human behaviour.

Prevention

The real way to reduce inheritance disputes hasn’t changed

1. 1

   Make a will

   And make it before capacity becomes questionable.

2. 2

   Take proper advice

   Professional drafting and a contemporaneous file remain valuable evidence.

3. 3

   Review it

   Revisit the will whenever your circumstances change.

4. 4

   Explain unusual decisions

   Be transparent where appropriate, and consider a letter of wishes.

5. 5

   Be careful about promises

   Informal assurances about houses, farms and businesses cause litigation.

6. 6

   Keep proper records

   Contemporaneous notes can answer questions long after you are gone.

7. 7

   Talk to your family

   Do it while you are still here to answer their questions. Technology can authenticate a document; it cannot conduct that conversation for you.

See also our practical guide: How Not to Start an Inheritance War.

And if the electronic will still starts an inheritance war?

From ink to encryption — but the family remains the same

The Law Commission’s proposals are sensible modernisation. Wills law should not remain frozen in 1837 simply because paper is familiar. Secure electronic wills could make will-making more accessible, improve storage and produce much better evidence about execution and authenticity.

They may prevent some disputes. But they will not end inheritance litigation.

Because the most difficult questions were never “what kind of paper was this printed on?” or “which pen was used?”. They were: Did Dad understand what he was doing? Why did Mum change her mind? Was my sister influencing her? Why was I left out? Was I promised the house? Why should his new partner get everything? Is this really what she wanted?

No electronic signature can answer all of those questions.

The will may become digital. The inheritance war will remain very human.

And when it does: mediate.

Current status. The Law Commission published Modernising Wills Law and its draft new Wills Act in May 2025. Electronic wills are among its recommendations, subject to specific safeguards. The proposals remain pending and have not yet become law.

This article provides general commentary on proposed reforms to wills law in England and Wales and on inheritance dispute resolution. It does not constitute legal advice.