Digital Legacy Is Now Inheritable: The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025
On 2 December 2025, a new piece of legislation received Royal Assent and came into immediate effect. The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025 has formally recognised that cryptocurrency, NFTs, digital photographs, and online assets are legally property, and can be inherited.
Why this Matters
For nearly two centuries, English law has divided personal property into just two categories: physical objects you can touch, and intangible rights like debts that must be claimed through litigation. Digital assets didn’t fit comfortably into either box, creating a legal grey area that left executors, beneficiaries, and genealogists in uncertain territory.
What’s Changed?
The Act creates a third category of personal property, confirming that digital or electronic things are not prevented from being property simply because they lack physical form. Cryptocurrency, NFTs, digital photographs stored in the cloud, and online accounts can now be traced, claimed, and distributed to heirs with full legal protection.
Executors can now use the full toolkit of property law, including freezing injunctions, tracing claims and remedies against theft or fraud.
A Flexible Approach
The Act deliberately doesn’t list what counts as a digital asset. Technology evolves rapidly, and rigid definitions would quickly become outdated. Instead, it leaves the courts to develop case law on a case-by-case basis, ensuring the law can adapt to technologies ‘not yet even imagined’.
What this Means for Treethorpe
At Treethorpe, we’re incorporating this significant legislative development into our forensic genealogy research work. Digital assets are increasingly valuable components of modern estates, from cryptocurrency holdings to digital photo archives that document family history. This new legal framework provides our team with crucial clarity when tracing beneficiaries and administering complex estates.
We can now include digital assets in our research scope, knowing they have full legal recognition and can be traced, valued, and distributed to rightful heirs with the same protections as traditional property. As digital wealth continues to grow, our expertise in both traditional genealogical research and modern asset identification ensures we can serve our clients comprehensively in this evolving landscape.
