A will you signed correctly is good for the rest of your life. No state requires you to renew it, re-sign it, or refresh it on any schedule, and a will from decades ago carries the same legal weight as one signed last week. The real question behind how long is a will good for is a different one: a will that is still technically valid can quietly stop reflecting your life, your family, or your assets, and that is where old wills cause damage.
Why a Valid Will Stays Valid
A will has no expiration date because the law doesn’t give it one. Once it meets your state’s execution requirements — in most states, a written document, signed by you, witnessed by at least two people who watched you sign or heard you acknowledge your signature — it stays enforceable until you die or until you deliberately revoke it.
During your lifetime, the document does nothing. It sits dormant. When you die, your executor presents it to the probate court, and the court follows the instructions in the most recent valid will you left behind. The date on that will does not matter. A properly executed will from 1985 controls your estate just as much as one signed yesterday.
The Two Ways a Will Actually Ends
A will stays in force until you cancel it, and there are only two ways to do that.
The cleanest is executing a new will with a revocation clause — a sentence stating that you revoke all prior wills and codicils. That removes any question about which document controls. If a new will doesn’t include an express revocation clause but covers everything the old one did, most states treat it as a complete replacement. A new will that only addresses part of your estate usually overrides the old will where the two conflict and leaves the rest of the old will in place, which is a recipe for arguments.
The second method is physically destroying the document — burning, tearing, or shredding it — but only if you did so intending to revoke it. Accidental damage doesn’t count. If someone else destroys the will, it only counts as revocation when they did it in your presence and at your direction. Writing “void” across the front or crossing out individual lines is less reliable, because some states don’t treat partial markings as full revocation.
Life Events That Rewrite Your Will for You
Even an untouched will can be altered by operation of law. Several events change what your will does regardless of what it says on the page.
Marriage After You Signed
If you marry after signing your will, your new spouse often has a legal claim to part of your estate even though the document doesn’t name them. Most states have omitted-spouse statutes that give a spouse left out of a pre-marriage will roughly the share they would have received if you had died with no will at all. The assumption is that you just didn’t get around to updating it. That assumption usually goes away if the will itself shows you meant to exclude a future spouse, or if you provided for them through a trust or beneficiary designation outside the will.
Divorce
A final divorce decree generally does the opposite. In most states, it automatically cancels every provision benefiting your former spouse — gifts, executor appointments, trustee roles — as if that person had died before you. The rest of the will stays intact. Legal separation without a final decree usually does not trigger this rule, so a separated spouse’s provisions can remain fully alive.
Children Born or Adopted After the Will
If you have or adopt a child after executing your will and the will says nothing about that child, pretermitted-heir statutes in most states presume you didn’t mean to leave them out. The omitted child typically receives a share of your estate, often equal to what they would have inherited had you died without a will.1Legal Information Institute. Pretermitted Heir If you had other children when you signed the will and left them specific shares, the new child’s portion usually comes out of those shares rather than off the top. The statute generally doesn’t apply if the will shows a clear intent to exclude the child or if you provided for them another way.
A Beneficiary Dies Before You Do
When someone you named in your will dies before you, their gift normally lapses and falls back into the general estate. Many states have anti-lapse statutes that redirect the gift to the deceased beneficiary’s descendants, but those laws usually apply only when the beneficiary was closely related to you. Naming an alternate for every significant gift is more reliable than hoping the default rules land where you want.
When the Property in Your Will No Longer Exists
A will that leaves a specific asset to a specific person creates a gap if you no longer own that asset at death. Sell the lake house you promised your daughter, and the gift to her simply disappears. The doctrine is called ademption by extinction, and the practical result is that the beneficiary usually has no claim to the sale proceeds either.2Legal Information Institute. Ademption by Extinction Courts sometimes allow a substitute asset through if you swapped one investment for a very similar one, but that requires litigation and an uncertain outcome.
A related problem shows up when you give someone part of their inheritance during your lifetime. If your will leaves $100,000 to a child and you hand them $25,000 while you’re alive, some states presume the lifetime gift was an advance and reduce the bequest to $75,000.3Legal Information Institute. Ademption by Satisfaction Other states have dropped that presumption entirely, so the lifetime gift doesn’t reduce the bequest unless you said it should. Either way, silence in the will invites a family fight.
The Real Risks of Letting an Old Will Sit
A will doesn’t expire, but age brings practical problems that can derail probate even when the document is still legally sound.
Your Witnesses May Be Gone
Probate courts typically need to confirm that the will is authentic, which can mean contacting the witnesses who signed it. If your will is 20 or 30 years old, those witnesses may have moved, lost touch, or died. The will isn’t automatically invalid, but probate becomes slower and more expensive. A self-proving affidavit avoids this. It’s a sworn statement signed by you and your witnesses before a notary at the time of execution, declaring that all the formalities were met. With one attached, the court can accept the will without hunting down anyone. If your current will doesn’t have one, re-executing with a self-proving affidavit is a cheap, high-value update.
A Missing Original May Be Treated as Revoked
If your original will cannot be found after your death, courts in most states presume you destroyed it on purpose. That presumption of revocation can send your estate through intestacy as if the will never existed. Your family can try to overcome the presumption with a copy and evidence that you did not intend to revoke, but it is an expensive and uncertain fight. Store the original where your executor can actually get to it, and tell them where it is.
You Could Lose the Ability to Change It
Updating a will requires testamentary capacity: understanding what you own, who the natural objects of your bounty are, and what the will does. Dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other cognitive conditions can take that capacity away. If you wait until your 80s to revise a will you signed in your 50s, you risk a court later finding you lacked the mental capacity to make the change. Lack of capacity is one of the most common and most successful grounds for a will contest. The time to update is when your competence is not in question.
Tax Law May Have Moved Underneath You
Estate plans built around specific tax thresholds can become counterproductive when the law changes. The federal estate tax exemption for 2026 is $15,000,000 per person, raised under legislation signed in July 2025.4Internal Revenue Service. What’s New — Estate and Gift Tax A will drafted years ago to minimize estate taxes with trusts or splitting strategies may now impose restrictions on a surviving spouse that no longer serve any tax purpose. Any tax-driven provisions deserve a fresh look against today’s numbers.
Debts Can Swallow the Gifts
A will distributes what remains after debts are paid. Creditors — secured lenders, funeral and administrative costs, taxes, medical bills, and unsecured debts — get paid in a statutory order before any beneficiary receives anything. If your financial picture has deteriorated, the gifts in your will may be more fiction than instruction, and an executor who distributes assets before clearing debts in the right order can be held personally liable.
If You Move to a Different State
Moving across state lines does not generally invalidate your will. Most states recognize a will that was properly executed under the law of the state where you signed it, the state where you lived at the time, or the state where you lived at death. A will signed in New York doesn’t stop working because you retired to Arizona.
Valid and optimal are not the same thing. Your new state may handle spousal rights, community property, and probate procedure differently. Moving from a common-law state to a community property state (or the reverse) can change what you actually own and are free to give away. The self-proving affidavit format accepted by one state may not match another’s requirements. After any permanent move, have a local attorney check the will against your new state’s rules.
How to Update a Will
There are two tools, and one is almost always better than the other.
Codicils for Narrow Changes
A codicil is a written amendment to an existing will. It must be executed with the same formalities — signature, witnesses — as the will itself. Codicils fit narrow changes: swapping an executor, adjusting a small bequest, adding a specific gift. The risk is cumulative confusion. After two or three codicils, the combined documents can contradict each other, and contradictions produce litigation. One codicil is usually the practical limit before a new will makes more sense.
A New Will for Everything Else
For any substantial change — divorce, remarriage, a new child, a major asset bought or sold, a move to a new state — a brand-new will is the better choice. Include a clear revocation clause canceling all prior wills and codicils. One clean document with one set of instructions leaves nothing for a disappointed relative to argue about.
Review the People, Not Just the Money
While you’re updating gifts, look at the people you’ve asked to carry them out. Executors age. The friend you trusted at 40 may be unwilling or unable to serve at 75. Name at least one successor executor, and apply the same thinking to guardians for minor children, trustees, and anyone else holding a fiduciary role.
When to Pull Your Will Out and Read It
A will doesn’t need yearly maintenance, but it does need checkups. Review it after any major life event: marriage, divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, a significant inheritance, a serious illness, or a move to a new state. Even with no triggering event, reading the document every three to five years catches the quiet problems — an executor you’ve lost touch with, a charity that no longer exists, a grandchild who wasn’t born when you signed it.
A will that sat in a drawer for 30 years is still a valid will. It is also the will most likely to produce a result the person who signed it would never have chosen.