Precipitated by the pandemic: From remote witnessing to electronic wills

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The pandemic served as a powerful catalyst, forcing many jurisdictions to re-evaluate the legal formalities surrounding will-making. While some jurisdictions like Singapore and Hong Kong chose not to intervene, others adopted temporary or even permanent reforms that enabled remote witnessing and, in England and Wales, proposed legislation for electronic wills. These reforms reveal divergent attitudes towards balancing legal certainty, testator protection, and adapting laws to meet the needs of a younger digitally savvy generation. England and Wales, through the Law Commission’s recent report and draft Wills Bill, has taken a significant step towards recognising electronic wills, albeit with caution and the retention of core formalities. By contrast, jurisdictions like Victoria and New South Wales in Australia have been more expansive, permitting remote witnessing and signing the documents in counterparts. Victoria has gone further by permitting electronic signatures when the remote execution procedure is used. The safeguard in Victoria is that the process requires a special witness in the form of a lawyer or JP. The law in both Australian states also mandates the witnesses to actually view the hand of the testator executing the will, a requirement which we argue is not technologically practical.

Government-backed digital identity portals—such as Singapore’s SingPass, Hong Kong’s iAMSmart, the UK’s One Login, and Australia’s myGovID, offer promising technological infrastructure to support secure electronic wills. However, their integration into will-making requires legal reform, technological enhancement (particularly with synchronous video conferencing), and, perhaps most importantly, public trust. As jurisdictions continue to assess the lessons of the pandemic, it is clear that the digitisation of will-making is not merely a response to crisis, but a forward-looking necessity. Ensuring that the evidentiary, cautionary, channelling, and protective functions of wills law are preserved in electronic form will be the central challenge for lawmakers. Jurisdictions that succeed in marrying legal rigour with technological accessibility and practicality will be best positioned to support the testamentary autonomy of future generations. The emerging norm is not the complete abandonment of formalities, but an evolution where formalities are preserved through a functionally equivalent processes, underpinned by technology. Our argument is that any reform permitting electronic wills must effectively guard against fraud or undue influence without being unduly restrictive. In other words, the regulatory framework should be necessary, proportionate and technologically practical.