The easiest place to find witnesses for a will is your estate planning attorney’s office, where paralegals and administrative staff witness signings as a routine part of their work. If you’re signing without a lawyer, any two adults who don’t inherit under the will can serve: friends, neighbors, coworkers, or in many cases a bank employee at a notary desk. The core rule is simpler than most people expect, and the hardest part is usually not finding people but choosing people who will still be reachable years later when the will goes to probate.
Your Estate Planning Attorney’s Office
This is where most wills get signed, and it’s the most reliable option by a wide margin. Estate planning attorneys handle will executions routinely, and their paralegals, legal assistants, and administrative employees regularly act as witnesses. These people have no connection to your estate, they’ve seen the process many times, and they know what the law requires. The attorney can supervise the whole signing to make sure every signature lands in the right place.
Using a law firm also solves the tracking problem. Firms keep records, so if a witness needs to be located years later for probate, the files make that straightforward. In some jurisdictions, if your attorney supervised the original signing, the attorney can step in as a backup witness if one of the originals becomes unavailable. For any estate with moderate complexity or any concern about future challenges, this is the most bulletproof route.
Banks and Notary Service Desks
Some banks offer witness services at their notary desks. Bank of America, for example, notes that a bank associate “may be able and available to act as a witness” during notarizations, though the bank recommends bringing your own non-bank witness as well because availability isn’t guaranteed at every branch.1Bank of America. Notary Services Call ahead before showing up with a will to sign. Bank notary services often require appointments, and not every branch has staff available to witness documents.
Retail shipping and office supply stores sometimes offer notary services, but their usefulness for wills is limited. The UPS Store warns that many of its locations do not notarize wills and that not all stores are “staffed to provide additional signature witnessing services.”2The UPS Store. Notary Services at The UPS Store These locations can work for simple notarization, but they aren’t a reliable substitute for a proper will execution.
Friends, Neighbors, and Coworkers
If you’re signing a will outside a lawyer’s office, your personal network is the most accessible source of witnesses. Any adult friend, neighbor, or colleague can serve, as long as they aren’t named in the will and aren’t married to someone who is. These people are nearby, available on short notice, and usually willing to help.
The downside is longevity. A will might not go through probate for 20 or 30 years. In that time, friends move, neighbors sell their houses, and coworkers change jobs. If a witness can’t be found when the will is submitted to probate, the executor may have to hire a private investigator or prove to the court that a diligent search was conducted. Courts sometimes accept testimony from one witness when the other genuinely can’t be located, but that’s not guaranteed. Choosing witnesses who are younger than you, stable in their housing, and likely to remain reachable significantly reduces this risk.
Record each witness’s full legal name, date of birth, home address, phone number, and email address, and store that information with the will or with the instructions you’ve left for your executor. If your witnesses are colleagues or neighbors rather than law firm staff, update the contact details every few years.
Who You Cannot Use as a Witness
The single biggest mistake people make is asking someone who inherits under the will to serve as a witness. In most states, a “purging statute” kicks in when a beneficiary witnesses the will. The will itself stays valid, but the witness-beneficiary risks losing part or all of their inheritance. Some states strip the entire gift, others reduce it to what the person would have received under intestacy law, and a handful allow the gift to stand if at least two other disinterested witnesses also signed.
The Uniform Probate Code takes a more forgiving approach, providing that an interested witness does not invalidate the will or any provision of it. But many states haven’t adopted that rule, and you probably don’t know which rule your state follows. The safest move is to keep every beneficiary away from the signature page.
That includes spouses of beneficiaries. In many states, if your will leaves property to someone and that person’s spouse serves as a witness, the gift can be voided the same way it would be if the beneficiary had witnessed it directly. The executor, trustee, and anyone named as guardian of minor children in the will should also be avoided where possible, since courts may view those roles as creating a financial interest.
Basic Qualifications
Every state except one requires at least two witnesses for a standard typed or printed will. Louisiana requires two witnesses plus a notary. A witness must be a legal adult (18 in most states, though a few set the bar at 14) and mentally capable of understanding what they’re observing. Under the Uniform Probate Code, which roughly 18 states have adopted in whole or in part, anyone “generally competent to be a witness” qualifies.
Witnesses don’t need to read the will, understand its contents, or know who inherits what. They don’t need special credentials, training, or legal knowledge. A neighbor, coworker, or the receptionist at your lawyer’s office works just as well as a retired judge. What matters is that the person can later be located and, if necessary, testify in court that the signing happened the way it was supposed to.
Use Three Witnesses and a Self-Proving Affidavit
A practical hedge against the tracking problem is to have three witnesses sign instead of two. Every state requires at least two, but nothing stops you from adding a third. If one witness later dies, moves abroad, or simply can’t be found, you still have two available for probate. It costs nothing and adds a minute to the signing.
Pair that with a self-proving affidavit, a sworn statement attached to the will, signed by the testator, both witnesses, and a notary. Under the Uniform Probate Code, a self-proved will “may be admitted to probate without the testimony of any attesting witness.” Without the affidavit, if a witness has died, moved, or refuses to cooperate, the executor faces a potentially expensive fight to prove the will is valid. With the affidavit, the notarized document speaks for itself. The notary must be a different person from either witness, since the notary’s job is to verify the actions of the people appearing before them. Most estate planning attorneys include this step automatically, and if you’re signing without a lawyer, it’s worth the small effort to find a notary at the same time.
Remote Witnessing Over Video
Remote witnessing through video conferencing became a topic of serious interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, but adoption has been uneven. As of 2025, roughly a dozen states and the District of Columbia have enacted electronic will statutes that allow remote witnessing, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, and Washington. Several additional states permit remote notarization but explicitly do not allow remote witnessing of wills.
Where remote witnessing is available, the requirements are strict. The signing must happen in real time with all parties visible and audible on screen. Witnesses still have to meet the same age and competency standards, and they still cannot be beneficiaries. Most states require specific technology platforms that create audit trails, and some mandate that a notary participate remotely as well. Verify your state’s current rules before relying on this route. Using remote witnessing in a state that doesn’t authorize it will almost certainly result in an invalid will.
When You Genuinely Can’t Find Witnesses
If finding witnesses is truly impossible, roughly half of U.S. states recognize holographic wills, which are handwritten wills that require no witnesses at all. A holographic will is valid as long as the signature and the material portions of the document are in the testator’s own handwriting.3Legal Information Institute. Holographic Will Some states require the entire document to be handwritten; others only require the key provisions and the signature.
Holographic wills have an obvious appeal in emergencies, such as a soldier deployed overseas or a patient in the hospital with no time to arrange a formal signing. They are far more vulnerable to challenge than witnessed wills, though. Without witnesses to confirm the testator’s state of mind, disputes over mental capacity and undue influence are harder to defend against. Handwriting authentication can also become an issue if the testator’s handwriting changed over time due to age or illness. Treat a holographic will as a last resort. If you have time to plan, two witnesses and a notary will always produce a more durable document.