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No Responses to “can i make a legal& binding will with a form from the office depot or print from my computer?”

1. Mary W Says:
   May 20th, 2009 at 3:49 am

   Yes you can. You also can write it on a tavern napkin and it is considered legal as long as you have one person witness and sign it there on the spot.

2. bostonianinmo Says:
   May 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 pm

   You need to review the requirements for a holographic will in your state. At least one state requires that it be written entirely in your own hand and NOT be witnessed. In other states “fill-in-the-blanks” wills or computer generated wills are completely valid.

   Most attorneys can prepare a simple will for less than $100 and often less than $50. Using a competent attorney ensures that you will cannot be successfully contested and that your wishes will be honored.

3. Pogolaw Says:
   May 25th, 2009 at 12:51 pm

   Wills written on tavern napkins are legal techically but I wouldn’t suggest it. Thay are wide open to contest in court because if it is contested experts may have to be brought in to attempt to verify that it is your handwriting and some of them are better than others and like a lot of other expert witnesses that can be found, one can be found that says it is and another can be found to say it isn’t. If whoever is contesting the will doesn’t like what one expert say’s, they just shop around until they find one that will testify to what they want them to say.

   If you have no large estate, I would suggest that you simply type up your will to simply state that you leave this and that to whomever to make specific bequests and then leave the bulk of your estate to your wife and sign it. You must bear in mind that you have to know if you live in a communtiy property state or not and what is and what is not community property, you cannot give away something that is not yours and it is not yours alone if you came into possession of it during your marriage.

   Only you have to sign the will and it does not have to be filed anywhere, you can store it at the county clerks office and that might be best but you can store it in a safe deposit box or in your sock drawer.

   I would have a “Self Proving Affidavit” attached to the Will in which you have two persons sign the affidavit stating that they witnessed you sign it, they place their signatures on it before a notary public and that is considered proof positive in probate court that the document is your will and that they saw you sign it and they don’t have to be brought into court so that no matter if they have moved away or died, they still serve as witnesses. That is the only thing that can be attached to a will.

   If you use a generic will, there might be language that either does not apply in your state or that you don’t understand, if you don’t understand it get it explained or leave it out and just use the form for a general outline. A Will that say’s, “I leave all to Wife”, pretty much sums it all up quite simply and if that is what you want to do, that will do it.

   You can also put a no contest clause in your will that simply states that whosoever contests this will shall cease to be a beneficiary of the will. That puts an end ot a lot of squabbles.

4. Dana B Says:
   May 26th, 2009 at 9:52 pm

   *Can* a do-it-yourself will be legal? Yes. Is doing it yourself likely to cause problems that will end up costing your family way more money than the couple of hundred you would have paid an attorney to do it right in the first place? In my experience as an estates lawyer, yes again. I strongly encourage you to spend the little bit of money and let a lawyer do it. If you don’t, at least please do a little online research into the wills laws in your state to make it more likely that you’ll get it right. I don’t know where you live, but in my state a will isn’t supposed to be filed anywhere while you’re still alive, you just keep it in a safe place so your family knows where it is and can probate it when you die.