01
Nobody knows it exists
The most common outcome by a wide margin. No inventory, no mention in the will, and an executor with no reason to look. The estate is administered, distributed and closed around an asset that is never found.
Service
The tokens are property now. The keys still aren’t.
The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 settled ownership. Access remains the problem that actually loses estates their money.
Short answer
Yes - in England and Wales, digital assets can be property. Section 1 of the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 removes the old obstacle that a thing had to be either a thing in possession or a thing in action. That means crypto-tokens can be owned, can form part of an estate, and can be claimed by an executor. It does not mean an executor can reach them: property rights and cryptographic access are separate problems and need separate solutions.
“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.” Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 (c. 29), s.1 - legislation.gov.uk. Royal Assent 2 December 2025; in force on the day passed (s.2(2)); extends to England and Wales and Northern Ireland (s.2(1)).
What the Act changed, and what it left alone
| Settled | Deliberately left open |
|---|---|
| A digital thing can be the object of personal property rights. | Which digital things qualify - no definition, no list, no register. |
| Crypto-tokens can be owned, held on trust, and pass under a will. | The boundaries of the new “third category”, left to the courts to develop case by case. |
| Executors have a recognisable proprietary claim to pursue. | Collateral arrangements for crypto-tokens, still under Law Commission consideration. |
| Applies in England & Wales and Northern Ireland, in force since 2 December 2025. | Access, custody and key recovery - the Act is silent, and always was going to be. |
Four ways digital estates fail
02
Everyone knows, nobody can open it
A hardware wallet in a drawer and a seed phrase that died with its owner. The estate owns it. The blockchain does not care.
03
The keys were shared too early
The opposite failure. A seed phrase written into the will, or handed to one child “just in case”, produces theft, family litigation, or an unintended lifetime gift with tax consequences.
04
The platform won’t cooperate
An exchange in another jurisdiction, a bereavement process measured in months, an account frozen mid-administration, and terms of service that treat the account as a personal licence rather than an asset.
How we structure a digital estate
1. Inventory, separated from secrets
An executor needs to know that an asset exists, roughly what it is, and who to approach. They do not need the keys until they are entitled to them. So the inventory is a living document listing venue, asset type, approximate value band and access route - and no credentials at all. Our free inventory builder runs entirely in your browser: nothing is transmitted or stored by us.
2. Drafting that transmits ownership
A specific digital-asset clause, drafted to cover assets not yet acquired, with an executor expressly empowered to deal with digital assets, engage specialist custodians, and take steps that a conventional administrative-powers clause does not contemplate. Where beneficiaries are minors or unlikely to handle self-custody, a trust structure with a competent trustee is usually better than an outright gift.
3. Access architecture, separated from the will
Keys never go in the will. The credible options are a sealed instruction held by a trusted party with a defined release condition; a split-secret scheme requiring several people to combine shares - a structure sometimes described as multi-party recovery; a multi-signature wallet where the estate holds one key and a professional holds another; or a specialist custody or inheritance service. Each has a different failure profile, and the right answer depends on value, technical confidence and who you actually trust.
On the crypto-inheritance platforms. There are now many - dead-man's-switch services, time-capsule chains, decentralised vaults. Some are cryptographically excellent. None of them make anyone the legal owner, none deal with HMRC, and a switch that releases keys on inactivity can produce a distribution that contradicts your will or, in a Shariah estate, an impermissible one. Used as an access layer beneath a properly drafted will, they can be genuinely useful. Used instead of one, they are a liability. We will tell you which of the two you are looking at.
4. Tax and reporting
HMRC treats crypto-assets as property for inheritance tax, valued at the date of death, and the estate must report them. Disposal by personal representatives can trigger capital gains. Volatility between death and realisation creates genuine practical difficulty, and the record-keeping needed to compute base costs is frequently absent. Building that record while the owner is alive costs almost nothing; reconstructing it afterwards can be impossible.
5. Digital assets that are not crypto
Photo libraries, domain names, monetised channels, published works, loyalty balances, business SaaS accounts and email - which is often the key to everything else. Some are property, some are contractual licences that end at death, and some sit under platform-specific legacy tools that only work if configured in advance. We go through them one by one, because the sentimental losses are the ones families actually grieve.
Common questions
Is cryptocurrency legally property in the UK?
In England and Wales, yes. Section 1 of the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 provides that a thing is not prevented from being the object of personal property rights merely because it is neither a thing in possession nor a thing in action. The Act received Royal Assent on 2 December 2025 and came into force the same day. It extends to England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland is not covered.
Can I leave Bitcoin in my will?
Yes, and you should - but the gift alone is not enough. A clause leaving “all my cryptocurrency” to a beneficiary transfers ownership; it does not transfer access. Without a plan for the private keys or seed phrase, your executors inherit a legal right to an asset nobody can move. The two must be drafted together.
Should I put my seed phrase in my will?
No. A will becomes a public document once a grant of probate is issued, so anything written in it can be read by anyone who pays for a copy. Seed phrases, passwords and private keys belong in a separate, secured mechanism referenced by the will - a sealed instruction, a split-secret scheme, a bank deposit, or a purpose-built custody service - never in the will itself.
What happens to crypto if the keys are lost when someone dies?
Legally the asset remains in the estate. Practically it is unrecoverable: the ledger has no concept of a grant of probate, and no court order can reconstruct a private key. This is why digital-asset succession is primarily an access-planning problem and only secondarily a drafting problem.
How do exchanges handle a deceased account holder?
Each has its own process, and none of them are quick. Most major exchanges require a death certificate, a grant of representation or its local equivalent, identification for the executor, and often a notarised instruction - then liquidate the holding and transfer fiat, rather than transferring the assets in specie. Some are incorporated outside the UK, which raises its own situs and enforcement questions. We keep a record of current requirements for the main venues and prepare the pack before it is needed.
Does the Act cover NFTs, tokenised securities and in-game assets?
Potentially. The Act is deliberately open-ended: it removes an obstacle rather than defining a list. The Law Commission left it to the courts to draw the boundaries of the new category. In practice, an asset that is rivalrous, divorced from any single person and capable of exclusive control is a strong candidate; a mere contractual licence to use a platform account is not, and is more likely to remain governed by the platform's terms of service.
Find out where your estate breaks
Twelve questions, two minutes, no account. The cross-border risk check flags the jurisdictions, the forced-heirship traps and the digital assets your current arrangements will not carry across.