Two Wills

"My father died in January. We found his will in the filing cabinet — notarized, witnessed, dated 2019. Everything looked straightforward. Then my sister was cleaning out his desk and found a second one. Handwritten. On regular notebook paper. Dated November 2022 — three months before he died. It says something completely different about the house."

Reader submission — T., Ohio

T. wanted to know which one counted.

The short answer: in most U.S. states, a handwritten will — called a holographic will — is legally valid. No witnesses required. No notary. Just the testator’s handwriting, their signature, and a date.

Which means T.’s father may have, entirely on his own, at his kitchen table, rewritten his estate plan three months before he died. Legally. Without telling anyone.

A holographic will written later in time generally supersedes an earlier notarized one. But “generally” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Courts look at whether the handwritten document shows clear intent to revoke the previous will. Whether the person had capacity when they wrote it. Whether the handwriting can be authenticated.

T.’s family ended up in probate court for seven months. The house went to who the handwritten will said.

I get some version of this story more often than you’d think.

Not because people are trying to be secretive. Usually it’s the opposite — someone lying awake at 3am, thinking that’s not actually what I want, getting up and writing it down before they talked themselves out of it.

The problem isn’t the intention. The problem is that nobody knew it existed until it was the only thing that mattered.

The problem isn't the intention.
The problem is that nobody knew it existed until it was the only thing that mattered.

ONE THING WORTH KNOWING

If you’ve made a will — check when it was last updated. If it’s been more than three years, or if anything significant has changed, it probably no longer says what you think it says.

And if you’ve written anything down that you intend to be taken seriously after you’re gone — tell at least one person it exists.

— Martin, Cincinnati OH