You do not need a lawyer to make a will. No state requires one, and if your estate is straightforward, an online service or a state statutory form can produce a legally valid document for a few hundred dollars or less. The harder question is whether you should hire one, and that depends on what your family and your assets look like. A will that meets every legal formality can still fail your family if the drafter didn’t anticipate the ways your particular situation can go wrong.
When You Can Safely Do It Yourself
Most estates are simpler than the people who own them assume. If you own a home, hold a few bank or retirement accounts, and want everything to go to your spouse and then equally to your children, a lawyer isn’t adding much. The same is true for a single person with no dependents leaving everything to a sibling or a parent. Clean lines, few ways to go wrong.
The practical markers of a DIY-friendly estate: clearly identified beneficiaries with no competing claims, no business ownership, no property in multiple states, no beneficiaries who receive government disability benefits, and a total value well below the federal estate tax threshold. If all of those describe you, an online will service or a state statutory will form will do the job.
Online will services generally run between $100 and $300 for an individual. LegalZoom’s basic will packages start around $99. Trust & Will sits closer to $199. Nolo’s WillMaker software falls in between at $109 to $219 depending on the plan. Several states, including California, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, and Wisconsin, publish statutory will forms — fill-in-the-blank templates written into state law — at no cost.
When You Should Hire a Lawyer
Some situations make a DIY will genuinely risky. If any of the following apply, professional drafting is almost always worth the money.
- Blended families. When you have children from a prior relationship and a current spouse, their interests naturally compete. Leaving everything to your spouse and hoping they’ll take care of your kids from an earlier marriage is a plan that fails constantly. A lawyer can build trusts and specific bequests that protect both sides.
- A beneficiary with disabilities. Leaving money directly to someone who receives Supplemental Security Income or Medicaid can disqualify them from those benefits. A special needs trust lets an inheritance reach them without cutting off government assistance, but it has to be drafted correctly to work.
- Business ownership. A will that doesn’t address business succession can force a sale, freeze operations, or set off disputes among co-owners. Buy-sell agreements and business-specific provisions need legal drafting.
- Property in multiple states. Real estate you own outside your home state may require a separate probate proceeding where the property sits. A lawyer can structure ownership or use trusts to avoid it.
- Disinheriting someone. Cutting a family member out requires precise language. Vague or incomplete disinheritance provisions are among the most commonly challenged parts of any will.
- Estates near the federal estate tax threshold. For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15 million per person, or $30 million for a married couple, following the increase enacted under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act signed in July 2025. If your estate approaches that level, tax planning through trusts and gifting strategies can save your heirs millions.1Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax
- Community property considerations. In the nine community property states, you can only leave your half of assets acquired during marriage. A lawyer can help you sort what’s community and what’s separate.
The common thread is ambiguity. A simple will works when there’s only one reasonable way to read your wishes. The moment competing interests, tax strategy, or benefit rules enter the picture, you want someone who drafts these documents for a living.
What Makes a Will Valid Either Way
Whether you hire a lawyer or not, the same baseline requirements apply. Specifics vary by state, but the core elements are consistent.
Age and Mental Capacity
You must be at least 18 in the vast majority of states. A handful set different thresholds — Georgia allows wills at 14, Louisiana at 16. Some states also permit minors to make wills if they’re married, serving in the military, or legally emancipated. Beyond age, you need “testamentary capacity,” meaning you understand what you own, who your natural beneficiaries are, and what the will does. The bar is lower than most people assume, but you do need to grasp the basics of what you’re signing.
Signing and Witnesses
Your will must be in writing and signed by you. Most states require two witnesses who watch you sign and then sign the document themselves. A rule that catches people off guard: in many states, if one of your witnesses is also a beneficiary, the gift to that person is voided. The will itself remains valid, but that witness-beneficiary loses their inheritance. States that have adopted the Uniform Probate Code take a more lenient approach and allow interested witnesses without penalty, but you shouldn’t gamble on which rule your state follows. The safest practice is to use witnesses who receive nothing under the will.
Self-Proving Affidavits
A self-proving affidavit is a notarized statement attached to your will in which your witnesses swear under oath that they watched you sign it voluntarily. It isn’t required for the will to be valid, but it spares your witnesses from having to appear in probate court after your death to confirm what they saw. Nearly every state allows self-proving affidavits, with only a few exceptions. Adding one at signing is a small step that meaningfully speeds up probate for your executor.
Holographic Wills
Roughly half of U.S. states recognize holographic wills, meaning wills that are handwritten and signed with no witnesses required. Where they’re accepted, the signature and material portions must be in the testator’s own handwriting. A few states, including New York, recognize holographic wills only for military personnel and mariners. A handwritten will made in a state that doesn’t recognize the form is simply invalid, so verify your state’s rule before relying on one.
What a Lawyer Costs
Most estate planning attorneys use flat fees for straightforward wills, which makes budgeting predictable. A basic will typically runs between a few hundred dollars and $1,500, depending on your location and the attorney’s experience. The attorney knows roughly how long a standard will takes to draft, and you know what you’ll pay before work begins.
For complex estates involving tax planning, multiple trusts, or business succession, attorneys more often bill by the hour. Hourly rates for estate planning vary widely by region, from roughly $150 to $400 or more in major metropolitan areas. Some attorneys use a hybrid model: a flat fee for the initial plan and hourly billing for later updates. Ask about the fee structure during your first conversation so nothing catches you off guard.
Look for someone who specializes in estate planning rather than a general practitioner who handles wills on the side. Some states offer board certification in wills, trusts, and estates, which signals tested expertise. Most estate planning attorneys will sit down with you for a brief initial meeting so you can decide whether the relationship feels right; for this kind of work, that personal comfort matters more than it does for most legal matters.
What the Process Looks Like
Your attorney will ask for a detailed picture of your financial life: assets, debts, insurance policies, retirement accounts, real estate, and business interests. They’ll also want to understand your family, including any complications like estranged relatives, prior marriages, or dependents with special needs. Come prepared with account statements and beneficiary designation forms. The more complete your information, the faster the process moves.
The attorney drafts the will based on your discussion, often adding provisions you wouldn’t have thought to include, like what happens if a beneficiary dies before you, or how to handle assets you acquire after signing. You review a draft, ask questions, request changes. Once you’re satisfied, the attorney handles the signing ceremony — witnessing and notarizing included — to make sure the execution is done correctly. Two to four weeks from first meeting to signed document is typical.
What Happens If You Skip the Will Entirely
The alternative is worth understanding, because it’s the reason to do something even if you can’t decide between DIY and hiring out. When someone dies without a will, the legal term is “intestate,” and a probate court distributes property according to a rigid state formula. Every state has its own intestacy law, but they all follow the same pattern: assets flow to your closest blood relatives in a fixed order, starting with spouse and children, then parents, siblings, and progressively more distant relatives.
The formula doesn’t care about your relationships or your intentions. Stepchildren, unmarried partners, close friends, and charities get nothing under intestacy unless they happen to be blood relatives. If you have minor children and no will, a judge picks their guardian rather than you. And if the state can’t locate any living relative, your entire estate goes to the state government. Any valid will replaces all of that with your own instructions.
Keeping Your Will Current
A will is not a set-it-and-forget-it document, whichever route you use to create it. Major life changes should trigger a review, and even without dramatic events, revisiting it every three to five years catches things that drift out of date: executors who’ve moved away, beneficiaries whose circumstances have changed, accounts that no longer exist.
Events that call for an immediate update:
- Marriage or divorce. Many states automatically revoke provisions naming a former spouse once a divorce decree is finalized, but the resulting gaps still need to be filled. Marriage can also affect an existing will’s validity in some states.
- Birth or adoption of a child. The new child needs to be provided for, and you may want to name a guardian.
- Death of a beneficiary or executor. If the person you named can no longer serve, your alternates take over, but only if you named alternates.
- Significant change in assets. Buying a home, receiving an inheritance, starting a business, or acquiring property in another state can all change what your will needs to address.
- Moving to a different state. Estate laws vary. A will drafted for one state may not fit the legal requirements or planning opportunities in another, particularly moving between a community property state and a common law state.
For small changes, like swapping an executor or adjusting a single gift, a codicil can do the job. A codicil is a formal amendment that must be signed and witnessed with the same formalities as the original. For anything larger, drafting a new will is almost always the better choice. Multiple codicils stacked on top of each other create confusion and increase the chance of a successful challenge in probate. A new will with a clear revocation clause keeps everything in one clean document, and if your situation has grown complicated enough to need real revisions, that’s usually the point at which a lawyer earns their fee.