The U.K. Government was due to publish its detailed response to the Law Commission of England & Wales landmark wills reform report by May 16, 2026. That date has now passed. As of late September 2026, no detailed response and no timeline for legislation have been published.

This article explains what the missed deadline means and recaps the essentials for anyone reading about electronic wills in the UK context for the first time.

The Quick Answer

Electronic wills are not legally valid in England and Wales. They require new primary legislation. The Law Commission published its final report, Modernising Wills Law, and a complete draft Wills Bill on May 16, 2025. Under the formal Protocol between the government and the Law Commission, ministers were required to give a full response within one year. That deadline has been missed. The reform is not dead, but it has stalled at the very first procedural step.

What the Missed Deadline Actually Means

When the Law Commission publishes a report, there is an agreed framework for how government should respond. The Protocol between the Lord Chancellor and the Law Commission sets out two commitments on timing. The government should provide an interim response “as soon as possible and in any event within six months”, and a full response “as soon as possible after delivery of the interim response and in any event within one year of publication of the report”.

For the wills report, that means an interim response was due by November 16, 2025, and a full response by May 16, 2026. The only document on record is a one-page holding statement published on May 16, 2025, the day the report was published, welcoming it and promising “detailed consideration”. As of late September 2026, that single page is still the government’s entire published position.

The delay has not gone unnoticed. In November 2025, six months on from the report, The Law Society of England & Wales publicly criticised the lack of progress, warning in its statement titled “No Will to Act on Wills Reform,” that the government “risks denying people access to justice and the right to protect their last wishes”. The full response remains outstanding.

An open letter signed by industry leaders and politicians has called on the government to speed up progress on making digital wills legally valid. Seven cross-party MPs, including Wera Hobhouse MP, Matt Bishop MP and Ayoub Khan MP, have signed the letter.

Reform of this magnitude deserves careful consideration, and the government is right to weigh it properly. But the groundwork has already been done. The Law Commission spent many years on this review, including extensive public consultation, and the key stakeholders agree that reform is needed. The minister responsible, Courts and Legal Services Minister Sarah Sackman KC MP, has said on the record that “the current law is outdated, and we must embrace change”. With that level of consensus and the backing of industry experts, this should be a straightforward win for the government.

It is also a win with real societal impact. Modernising how wills are made would reduce many of the causes of contested wills (disputes over validity, lost documents, and uncertain signatures) that drive delays in probate and pile further pressure on an already overstretched court system. Every month without a response pushes a Wills Bill, parliamentary scrutiny, Royal Assent, and commencement further down the road.

Meanwhile, Other Countries Are Moving Ahead

While England and Wales wait, other jurisdictions are pressing ahead. In the United States, a growing number of states have enacted electronic wills legislation. New York became one of the latest, signing its Electronic Wills Act into law in December 2025, with the new rules due to take effect in June 2027. More than a dozen US states now permit electronic wills in some form. The international direction of travel is clear; the open question is whether England and Wales keep pace.

A Recap for First-Time Readers

If this is your first time reading about the reform, here is what you need to know.

An electronic will is a will that is created, signed, witnessed, and stored digitally, without paper or wet-ink signatures. It does exactly what a paper will does, but without the paper. Electronic wills are not currently legal in England and Wales. Creating a valid will still relies on the Wills Act 1837, which requires a handwritten signature on a printed document with two witnesses physically present.

Modern consumers expect digital solutions. Banking, investments, mortgages, and tax are now handled through an app or a website. Against that backdrop, it is remarkable that in 2026 making a will still depends on antiquated paper and the physical presence of witnesses, when the technology to do it securely online is already in daily use.

That friction is one reason more than half of UK adults do not have a valid will. When someone dies without one, their estate is divided under the Rules of Intestacy, a rigid formula that, for example, leaves an unmarried partner with nothing, however long the couple lived together.

On May 16, 2025, the Law Commission published Modernising Wills Law alongside a draft Bill to replace the 1837 Act. Its headline recommendations include allowing electronic wills, permitting remote witnessing by live video, lowering the minimum age to make a will from 18 to 16, abolishing the rule that automatically revokes a will on marriage, and adopting a modern test of mental capacity based on the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The “Reliable System”: The Key Concept

The Law Commission draft bill did not tie electronic wills to any single technology. Instead, it requires that they be created and stored on a “reliable system”, defined by what it must achieve rather than how. A reliable system must link the testator and witnesses to their signatures at the time of signing, allow the authentic will to be identified from copies, and protect it from unauthorised alteration or destruction.

Those legal requirements translate into three plain-English foundations: Authenticity (proving who signed), Security (protecting the signing environment from fraud and coercion), and Integrity (ensuring the will cannot be altered after it is signed).

Why the Delay Does Not Change What People Should Do

A stalled government timeline does not change the most important fact: the only will that protects a legacy is a valid one made today. Reform will not help anyone who dies before it takes effect, and the coming changes will not invalidate existing wills.

For those without a will, making one now is the single most valuable step they can take. For those who already have one, it is worth checking how securely it is stored. Paper wills can be lost, damaged, or disputed after death with no way to prove they are genuine, and in an age of AI and deepfakes, that risk is rising.

What to Watch for Next

The single most important near-term milestone is still the government’s full response to the Law Commission’s report, now overdue. When it arrives, it should confirm which recommendations ministers accept, whether the Law Commission’s draft Bill will form the basis of legislation, and an indicative timeline for a Wills Bill.

That timeline matters beyond Westminster. England and Wales are not deciding whether to permit electronic wills, only when, while more than a dozen US states, New York among the most recent, have already answered that question and moved on. For practitioners handling UK-situs assets or advising clients with ties to both jurisdictions, the gap between “settled in principle” and “law in practice” is the detail worth watching closely over the coming months.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Last updated September 25, 2026.