Digital assets and crypto in an expat's will

For years, articles about crypto and wills opened with a legal puzzle: is a bitcoin even property, capable of being left to someone? England and Wales answered by statute. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, in force since 2 December 2025, provides that 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 fits neither of the two traditional categories of personal property. It's the legislation the Law Commission recommended to confirm a third category of personal property capable of accommodating crypto-tokens. So the tidy conclusion comes first: your England and Wales will can leave your digital assets to whoever you choose, the same as your other movables.

So the law is the easy part. Everything that goes wrong with digital assets in estates now goes wrong at the practical layer, and the practical layer is where expats have extra work.

The finding problem

An executor can only collect what they can find. Bank accounts announce themselves in post and statements; a crypto exchange account, a hardware wallet in a drawer, a domain portfolio, an online business, a points balance, none of it does. Assets that nobody knows exist don't make it into the estate; they just stop.

The fix is the same inventory discipline STEP has recommended for years: a list of your digital assets, telling your executor what exists and where to find it. It lists account names, platforms, wallet types and where the access route lives, and it carries no credentials. For an expat the list matters twice over, because the executor may be in a different country from both you and the assets, facing the timezone problem our executors guide covers, with nothing arriving in any post box to prompt them.

The access problem, and why passwords never go in the will

Finding is half; entering is the other half. Two facts shape everything here.

First, the will is the wrong place for secrets. When probate is granted in England and Wales, the will is kept by the Probate Service and any member of the public can get a copy; the online record appears roughly a fortnight after the grant, and a copy costs £16. A will with a seed phrase in it is a published seed phrase. Passwords, PINs, recovery phrases and keys never go in the will, in a letter admitted to probate, or in anything else that could become part of the public record.

Second, with self-held crypto, control is the asset. In practice, whoever holds the private keys or recovery phrase controls the coins, and without them the assets are usually irrecoverable, by your executor, by the court, by anyone. Exchange accounts sit somewhere gentler: platforms have their own death processes, generally restrictive and paperwork-hungry, and your executor deals with each provider's rules in each provider's jurisdiction.

The working structure is two documents doing two jobs. The will says who inherits, and can helpfully define digital assets within the estate. A separate access plan, stored securely and never entering probate, tells the executor how: where the inventory is, where devices and any hardware wallets live, and how to reach the credentials, whether that's a sealed envelope with the will's storage copy, a password manager's emergency access, or arrangements a specialist helps you set up. What that plan should say for your holdings depends on how you hold them, and for substantial crypto it's worth professional help to set up; this article describes the structure and deliberately stops there.

The expat wrinkles

Three extra layers for readers of this site.

Where is a cryptoasset, legally? For tax, HMRC's published view is that the location of exchange tokens follows the residence of the beneficial owner, a view the manual itself presents as HMRC's rather than statute, and the underlying law is unsettled. For a UK-resident-tail expat under the long-term residence rules, the practical reading is unfriendly either way: your worldwide estate can stay within UK inheritance tax for years after leaving, so the coins are likely counted wherever they're deemed to sit. That's regulated-advice territory. This article can only flag it.

Which country's processes apply? The exchange's death process runs under the exchange's terms wherever it's incorporated; the hardware wallet obeys whoever holds the phrase; and the will that says who inherits is read through the conflict-of-laws lenses our country guides cover. Digital assets don't escape the cross-border questions; they add a jurisdiction of their own, the platform's.

And the risk warnings don't switch off for estate planning: the FCA's blunt framing is that anyone investing in crypto should be prepared to lose all their money, and UK compensation scheme cover is highly unlikely. An estate plan for volatile, unprotected assets should assume the value at death may look nothing like the value today.

What to do this month

1. Write the inventory: every platform, wallet, domain, online business and balance, with where the access route lives. No credentials on this page either; it's a map, and maps get photocopied.
2. Build the access plan and store it outside the will: sealed envelope beside the will's storage copy, a password manager's emergency access, or a specialist arrangement for larger holdings.
3. Tell your executor the plan exists. An access plan nobody knows about fails exactly like an asset nobody knows about.
4. Check the will covers the estate you now hold. Ours are £149 for a single will, £249 for mirror wills, drafted around expat circumstances and reviewed by a person before your documents are released.
5. If the crypto is a serious share of the estate, take regulated advice on the tax side; the situs question and the long-term residence rules are not a do-it-yourself corner.

The 2025 Act settled the interesting question. What's left is admin, and admin is winnable: one list, one plan, one will, none of them containing a password.

Sources

• Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025, sections 1 and 2 (legislation.gov.uk)
• Law Commission, Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 has received Royal Assent (lawcom.gov.uk)
• Search probate records for documents and wills (gov.uk)
• HMRC Cryptoassets Manual CRYPTO22600 (gov.uk)
• Inheritance Tax if you're a long-term UK resident (gov.uk)
• FCA InvestSmart, Crypto: the basics (fca.org.uk)

Expat Legacy provides England and Wales wills and general information about cross-border estate planning. This is general information only. It is not legal, tax or investment advice; how digital assets should be held, accessed and taxed depends on individual circumstances, HMRC's view on cryptoasset location is its published position rather than settled law, and the Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 extends to England and Wales and Northern Ireland. Scots law differs. Position stated as at August 2026.