Guides
A will is the one document where doing nothing is also a decision.
Die without one and your estate is still distributed — by a statutory order written for the average case, administered by whoever the court appoints, with your children's guardianship decided on the evidence available. Most people are surprised by what that order actually says where they live.
This is general information to help you prepare, not legal advice. Requirements differ by jurisdiction and change; where a document matters, take advice where it will be used.
With no will
What the law does instead
The detail differs by jurisdiction — sometimes a great deal — but the shape is remarkably consistent, and so are the assumptions people get wrong.
A fixed order decides who inherits. Spouse and children first in most regimes, then parents, then siblings, in shares set by statute. It does not know that one child has already been helped, that a sibling is estranged, or that you wanted the business to go to the person who runs it.
An unmarried partner is very often entitled to nothing. In many common-law regimes a partner of thirty years who never married takes no share at all under the intestacy rules and must bring a claim to get one. This is the single most common and most damaging surprise.
The court chooses the administrator. Somebody has to collect the assets, pay the debts and distribute what is left. With no appointment, the right to do it follows a statutory list, and the person at the top of it may not be the person you would have chosen or the one best placed to do it.
Children’s guardianship is decided without you. A court will act on the child’s best interests, but it does so with no statement from the parents about what they wanted.
It usually takes longer and costs more. An estate with no appointed executor, no clear direction and possibly no located beneficiaries is administered slowly, and the cost comes out of what the family receives.
Preparing one
What a will generally needs to be valid
Written for the common-law pattern, because that is where most readers of this page will be. Civil-law regimes work differently — notarial wills drawn up before a notary, and wholly handwritten holographic wills valid in France, Germany, Spain and elsewhere — so check what applies where you live and where your property is.
In writing
Typed or handwritten. Video, audio and a note on a phone are not wills in the regimes this product operates in, whatever the circumstances.
Signed by you, as your will
The intention matters as much as the mark. A draft signed to show an adviser is not a will; the same page signed as your will is.
Witnessed by two, present together
Two independent adults see you sign, then sign themselves while you are there — and neither of them, nor their spouse, may take anything under it. A witness who is a beneficiary can lose the gift while the will itself stands perfectly valid.
Made with capacity, and freely
You must understand what you are doing, what you own and who has a claim on you, and be acting of your own free will. Where either might later be questioned — illness, age, an unexpected disposition — evidence gathered at the time is what answers it.
Omissions
Six things people leave out
Not exotic mistakes. These are the ordinary gaps that turn a will into a problem, and every one of them is avoidable at the drafting stage for nothing.
The residue
A will that gives away the house, the car and a sum of money, and stops, has disposed of three things. Everything else — savings, possessions, anything acquired later — falls to the intestacy rules, which is usually exactly what the will was written to avoid. A residuary gift catches all of it, including what you do not own yet.
A substitute for everyone named
Executors move abroad, fall out, and die. So do beneficiaries. A will that names one executor and no substitute, or leaves a gift with no direction if that person dies first, creates work for a court. Name a fallback for every role and every significant gift.
Guardians for children
If there is no appointment, who raises a child whose parents have both died is decided by a court on the evidence in front of it. An appointment in a will is the clearest statement of what the parents wanted — and it is worth telling the people you have named, because they can decline.
Digital accounts and records
Photographs, domains, cryptocurrency, business accounts, a password manager. Some of it is property that passes under the will; some of it is a licence that dies with you. What an executor needs above all is to know it exists and how to reach it — which is a note kept with the will, not a list of passwords inside it.
Debts, tax and where the money comes from
Gifts are paid after debts and tax. A will that gives away more than the estate holds leaves the executor to abate the gifts in a statutory order nobody in the family expected. Say which fund bears the tax on a gift, particularly a foreign one.
Anything held outside the will
Jointly owned property may pass by survivorship whatever the will says. Pensions and life policies often pass by nomination to the scheme, not through the estate. A will that "leaves everything" without checking what actually passes under it can miss the largest asset entirely.
Afterwards
A will is not finished when it is signed
Two things undo more wills than bad drafting: nobody can find the original, and life moved on without it.
The original is the will
A probate registry generally wants the signed original, not a copy. A will that cannot be found is often presumed destroyed and therefore revoked — so store it somewhere safe and durable, and tell your executors exactly where. Keeping a scanned copy alongside is sensible; it is a record of what the will said, not a substitute for it.
Review it when life changes
Marriage, divorce, children, a death among those named, a business, a move to another country, a significant asset. In England and Wales and several other common-law regimes marriage revokes an earlier will unless it was made in contemplation of that marriage — which quietly leaves a great many people intestate who believe they have a will (see marriage instruments). Divorce generally does not revoke a will, but typically treats the former spouse as having died first.
Where Rutba stands
We will help you prepare it. We will not let you sign it here.
This is the one place where the product deliberately says no, and it is worth being exact about why.
A will cannot be executed on this platform
Wills are excluded from the United States ESIGN Act (15 USC §7003(a)(1)) and from UETA, and from the e-signable set of every regime this product has reviewed. The engine treats the category will as a refusal at send, names the category, and records the citation — the same answer you are reading here, in the software rather than only on the website.
A handful of jurisdictions have introduced narrow electronic-will regimes with their own qualified custodians and their own procedures. None of them is a general e-signature platform, and none is implemented here. If you are in one of them, use the process that regime actually provides.
What we do help with
- Drafting in the shared word processor, with every version kept and changes tracked, so a will written with a family member or an adviser has a history.
- Printing a clean PDF original to execute on paper.
- Keeping the scanned executed copy, the letter of wishes and the note of where the original lives, in one place your executors can be given access to.
- The surrounding paperwork that is not a will and can be signed here — a power of attorney that is not a deed under a regime requiring physical witnessing, a business succession agreement, a shareholders’ agreement.
What is built, and what a will still waits for
Guided drafting exists: the wizard asks the questions a document turns on and composes it for the jurisdiction it is for, execution block included. A will is deliberately not one of the documents it offers.
The reason is the difference between the two failures. A badly composed contract is an argument between people who can both still explain what they meant; a badly composed will is discovered when its author cannot be asked. So a will pack comes only once a lawyer has read it for the regime it is offered in — and even then it will print for wet-ink execution rather than being signed here, because that is what the law requires and no amount of product design changes it.
Questions
Questions about wills
Can I write my own will?
In most common-law regimes, yes — there is no requirement to use a lawyer. Whether you should depends on the estate: a straightforward one left to a spouse and children is very different from a business, property in more than one country, a blended family, or anyone likely to bring a claim. The cost of advice is almost always smaller than the cost of a contested estate.
Does a will have to be witnessed by a lawyer or a notary?
In the common-law pattern, no — two independent adults who take nothing under the will is the usual requirement. Civil-law regimes are different: a notarial will is drawn up before a notary, and some allow a wholly handwritten holographic will with no witnesses at all. Check what applies where you live.
Why can I sign a million-pound contract here but not a will?
Because the law drew the line there rather than by value. Contracts are covered by electronic-transaction statutes; wills are expressly carved out of them, largely because a will is proved when its maker can no longer explain it. That is also why the formalities are strict about presence: the witnesses are the safeguard against a document nobody can now question.
Can I at least store my will with Rutba?
You can store a scan of the executed will, a letter of wishes and a note of where the original is held — and give your executors access to it. Do not treat that as storing the will: the probate registry generally wants the signed original, and a copy is evidence of what it said, not the thing itself.
What about a power of attorney?
That depends on where you are and what kind. Many powers of attorney are deeds, and a deed needs a witness — physically present under English law, which is why Rutba refuses those rather than recording a remote witness. Some regimes have their own registration process for lasting or enduring powers. Take advice on the form before preparing one.
Is this legal advice?
This is general information to help you prepare, not legal advice. Requirements differ by jurisdiction and change; where a document matters, take advice where it will be used. A will is precisely the document where that sentence matters most: it is read for the first time when its author is no longer available to explain it.
For everything a will is not
Agreements, contracts, leases, NDAs and employment papers — sent by link, signed by people who need no account, and sealed into a record anyone can verify without one.