A will is one of the few documents in English law whose validity still turns on a ceremony performed correctly in a single, unrepeatable moment. The requirements are few in number — but non-compliance is severe in consequence, because the defect comes to light only after death, when it is generally irreversible. And the most dangerous of the recurring traps is also the quietest: the wrong person witnessing.
This article summarises a Standard Index Group technical note, 'Digital Will Execution: The s.9 Checklist' (SIG-TN-2026-03). The full note — the statute step by step, with the execution checklist — is linked at the end.
What section 9 actually requires
Section 9 of the Wills Act 1837 requires that the will be in writing; that it be signed by the testator, or by someone else in their presence and at their direction; that the signature be made or acknowledged in the simultaneous presence of two or more witnesses; and that each witness then attest and sign the will, or acknowledge their signature, in the presence of the testator.
One formal moment, in that order — and a document that fails it is simply not a will, however clearly it records what its maker wanted.
The witness trap: the gift dies, the will survives
A beneficiary — or that beneficiary's spouse or civil partner — who acts as a witness voids the gift to that beneficiary under section 15, while leaving the will itself standing. Nothing announces the mistake at the ceremony. The will remains valid; the rest of its dispositions stand; and the loss surfaces only at distribution, when the person the will meant to provide for discovers their share died with the signature.
The gift is void. The will stands. The loss surfaces only at distribution.
The trap is easy to walk into because witnessing feels harmless, and the nearest adults when a will is signed at home — a grown-up child, an in-law, a close friend — are exactly the people most likely to benefit under it, or to be married to someone who does. The working rule has no exceptions worth relying on: never use a beneficiary, or a beneficiary's spouse or civil partner, as one of the two witnesses.
The video-witnessing window has closed
The pandemic-era concession that permitted witnessing by video link — introduced by SI 2020/952 and extended by SI 2022/18 — applied only to wills made between 31 January 2020 and 31 January 2024. It has expired. Physical presence of the witnesses is once again required for every will executed under the current law. As the note puts it: 'digital' in its title is a caution, not a category.
The other quiet failures
Alongside the witness trap sit the rest of the recurring failure points: witnesses who were not simultaneously present when the testator signed or acknowledged; problems with the signature and its placement; the special position of the blind, illiterate, or physically incapacitated testator, whose accommodations must be used deliberately and recorded; and alterations made after execution, caught by section 21 — a crossed-out legacy or a name scribbled in the margin generally achieves nothing at all.
What this means in practice
The Law Commission has recommended reform — a dispensing power to save deserving but defective documents, a scheme for electronic wills, abolition of revocation by marriage — and none of it is yet law.
A will executed today is executed under the 1837 formalities exactly as they stand, and the note arranges them into a checklist precisely because prevention is the only remedy the current law offers.
Valoren keeps the record around that ceremony: where the will is held, who witnessed it, and who has been told — so the document that passed its one formal moment can also be found and proved when it is needed.
This article summarises SIG-TN-2026-03, 'Digital Will Execution: The s.9 Checklist' (Joel Patterson, June 2026), DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21462997 — linked below. Applies to England and Wales. This article is for information only.