Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 — what it means for UK wills and estates
The narrowly drafted Act, which received Royal Assent in December 2025, confirms that cryptoassets, NFTs and other digital property can be the object of personal-property rights in England and Wales — putting the Law Commission's 'third category' on a statutory footing.
By Money Guide editorial team
Published:
The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 received Royal Assent in December 2025. It is short and deliberately narrow: it confirms that a thing is not prevented from being the object of personal-property rights in England and Wales merely because it is neither a thing in possession nor a thing in action. That puts the line of cases starting with AA v Persons Unknown [2019] EWHC 3556 — and the Law Commission's 2023 Digital Assets report (Law Com No 412) — on a statutory footing.
What the Act does not do is equally important. It does not define what a 'digital asset' is, it does not set out how crypto or NFTs pass on death, and it does not change the tax treatment of digital property. It removes a doctrinal obstacle and leaves the rest to the existing law of property, succession and tax.
The practical implication for households is straightforward: a will can validly leave cryptoassets, NFTs, in-game items or tokenised carbon credits — but unless the executor can actually access the assets, the gift can be functionally lost. Self-custodied crypto cannot be recovered without the seed phrase. Custodial accounts at exchanges follow each platform's bereavement process. Including a clear digital-asset inventory and access plan alongside the will is now the higher-leverage step.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate private law. Both recognise digital property through their own routes; the statutory wording of the 2025 Act applies to England and Wales only.
For the underlying inclusion in the estate — and the £325,000 nil-rate band, £175,000 residence band and 36% reduced charity rate — Inheritance Tax rules are unchanged. The master guide on digital assets in your will sets out drafting, access and executor considerations; the new digital asset IHT calculator estimates the headline tax exposure for an estate that includes crypto and NFTs.