Knowledge & Resources
Wills and estate planning
What a will does, how to write one, and what your state requires for it to count.
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Wills and estate planning
What a will does, how to write one, and what your state requires for it to count.
Writing a will is mostly a matter of answering questions in order. Below is what the process actually involves, in the order our questionnaire asks. Most people finish in about 25 minutes, and you do not need an account to start.
Before you begin it helps to have two things roughly in mind: who you want to inherit, and who you trust to handle the paperwork afterwards. You do not need documents, valuations or account numbers.
Two quick questions: that you are old enough to make a will in your state, and that you are making it freely rather than under pressure or while impaired. Both are legal requirements everywhere, and a will made without them can be challenged.
Your legal name, date of birth and address. The address matters more than it looks: your state of residence decides which law governs the will and what the signing rules are.
Marital status, children, and whether any are minors. If they are, you name a guardian. This is the decision a court genuinely cannot make for you, and for many people it is the reason to write a will at all. Pets come next, with a caretaker and money for their care if you want it.
You can list assets individually or give an overall estate value. Listing them takes longer but lets you leave particular things to particular people later on. Either is fine, and you can change it afterwards.
Either specific gifts to named people, or percentage shares of everything, or a combination. If you choose percentages, you also say what happens if a beneficiary dies before you: their share can pass to their children, or be split among the others.
Your executor, plus an alternate in case they cannot serve. Optionally a digital executor for online accounts and photos, and a custodian to hold anything inherited by a child until they are old enough to receive it.
Burial or cremation, anything else you want your family to know, and an optional personal message. None of this is legally binding, and all of it spares the people arranging your funeral from guessing.
A summary of every answer, each with an edit link back to the step it came from. Then the document is produced as a PDF for you to print.
Everything above produces a document. What makes that document a will is signing it correctly, and that happens after you leave the site, usually days later, with nobody prompting you.
In nearly every state that means signing it yourself, in the physical presence of the number of adult witnesses your state requires, who then sign in turn. Your witnesses should be people who inherit nothing under the will. In some states a notary is involved as well, and in many the notary is for a separate affidavit rather than for the will itself. The exact rules are set by your state, and they are the one part of this we cannot do for you.
An unsigned will, or one witnessed the wrong way, is usually worth nothing, and it fails at the worst possible moment: after your death, when you can no longer fix it. Your generated document includes the signing instructions for your state. Check the requirements where you live before you sign.
Keep the signed original somewhere your executor can find it, and tell them where that is. A will nobody can locate is as much use as no will at all. Do not staple, unstaple or write on it; anything that looks like tampering invites a challenge.
Revisit it when something changes: a marriage, a divorce, a birth, a death, a move to another state. If you make a new will, sign the new one properly and destroy the old copies.
