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I’ve gotten a couple of questions lately about when a Will becomes effective.  One of these questions was from a son whose mother had a habit of writing and rewriting her Will on a regular basis to delete one or another of her children as a beneficiary based on who was the last person to visit the mother.  Another question was from a man whose brother had died and he wanted to know if a written, but unsigned, copy of a Will was effective.

A Will is a document that tells the world (and most importantly, the court) how you want your ‘stuff’ distributed after you have died.  Most people think of this as telling the world about your plan for the inheritance of your estate.

Contrary to popular belief, a Will does not become effective when it is written, or when it is signed, or even when it is executed correctly with all of the proper witnesses and signatures and put in a safe-deposit box.

A properly executed Will becomes effective the moment after the person who is the subject of the Will takes their last breath.  That is, only when the person who is the subject of the Will has died.

This is because as long as a person is alive, they can change their minds about what they want to do.  Most Wills have some verbiage that says something to the effect that the person revokes any and all existing Wills and that this is now their Last Will and Testament.  But if they are still alive, they can always come back next year, or next week, and do the same thing again.

Also, unless the Will was executed with all of the correct processes and procedures, it is just a bunch of words on a paper and basically worthless.  If you want your Will to be effective at your death, you need to have the proper execution formalities for your jurisdiction.

The last Will that was properly executed before your death is the one that the courts will find to be effective, even if you had changed your mind and thought you were making the right changes in later documents.

If you have any questions about this or any other legal subject, please feel free to give us a call at 757-234-4650 or visit our website at http://www.BeaversLaw.com.

A Will is a written statement signed by you that tells everyone how you want your ‘probate estate’ to be distributed after you die.  It doesn’t mean anything until after you die and you can change the terms of the Will, or even revoke your Will, up until the instant of your death.

If you have no probate estate when you die, then you really don’t need a Will because you have nothing to distribute.

If you die with things in your probate estate and without a will, the law of the state where you die will make the determination of what happens to your things.  In Virginia, the laws distribute the contents of your probate estate to your family members in a manner that the lawmakers decided was most likely to be what the majority of people would want.  This is sort of a ‘default Will’ and you don’t need to do anything to use this process.

However, if you want to make sure that your estate is distributed the way you had planned, then you need to draft a Will.

Contact an estate planning attorney for more information.