Summary answer – Rarely do you come across a new law (particularly in the UK in 2026) that makes you think – they did it properly. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 is just one of those things. It’s one provision long and it nails it right on target.
Batteries not included
Our digital overlords and ‘tech bro’s’ have argued that to stop Digital Assets in your will. Accounts, passwords, music, videos, books and so on are neither land (well… obviously) therefore are not ‘real property’ or ‘realty’. Nor are they ‘personal property’ or ‘personalty’ – and therefore your executors have no control over them. Which is annoying if you have a large music collection which is stored digitally.
Well they do now because the government wrote this Act in 2026 and it seems to nail it. This gives your executors control over digital assets.
Job done?
You can of course elaborate on what your intentions are in your will. But typically digital assets are merely licenced to you whilst you’re alive and so they simply end on your death. However, for anything that falls through the net, which is not cancelled up on you passing away, this should ‘sort it out’.
Obviously, if you have valuable digital assets – bitcoins, NFT’s (remember those?!), other videos or images, sounds recordings – you should list them out and make specific legacies of them, if your intentions differ from the residuary beneficiary’s position.
Full act here. Marvellous.
“Objects of personal property rights
A thing (including a thing that is digital or electronic in nature) is not prevented from being the object of personal property rights merely because it is neither—
(a) a thing in possession, nor
(b) a thing in action.”
The Act – https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2025/29
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