This is definitely not true everywhere. In states where wills have to be filed with the courts, an incorrect form will cause it to be rejected. Some states allow handwritten wills, some don’t. Some require a will to be notarized, some don’t. Some states will invalidated a will that is witnessed by a beneficiary. Some states require a will to include certain components.
And the issue isn’t just whether the people in your will will contest it. It’s also the people not named in the will.
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Don’t keep your will in your own safe deposit box. It’s a real PITA to get into it when you’re gone. You should keep your will in your spouse’s SDB and vice versa.
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Which is great unless you both die in a car accident. In some states, like Virginia, the court can order a safe deposit box to be opened to retrieve a will. In other states, the box is frozen on your death and won’t be opened until the estate is settled.
What’s more important , IMHO, is a list of documents and their location, which you give to several key people. If you die and nobody knows that you even have a safe deposit box or where it’s located, nobody will ever find your will.
You don’t need the court order in Virginia.Va Code 3.2-2302 provides for limited access to your safe deposit box.
However, I recommend to clients that they keep it in a fire proof box in the house, and that they let their proposed executors know where the documents are kept sot that there is no confusion as to whether the decedent died intestate or not.
This is my understanding as well. I’m a law student with no particular expertise in estate law, but I’ve been told that judges in estate law are real ballbusters. Contract law is the opposite. If you draw up a contract on a bar napkin but left out the wherefores and whosoevers, the judge will bend over backwards to try to see the intent behind the document and enforce it as such.
Not so with estate law. If you don’t follow every jot and tittle as to how wills are to be written, the whole thing gets canned. Why that is, I’m not sure…
It’s because in your contract situation the parties are available to give evidence about the agreement they made in the bar, whereas in the will situation the key person is unavailable.
As I said, I’m not an estate lawyer, but I took Estates Law from one, and this was the refrain she drilled into our heads. While the overwhelming trend of the 20th century was the dismantling of formalism in contracts, sales documents, even court pleadings, that carried over only in a very modest way to wills, because it’s guaranteed that you can’t ask the guy what he meant.