Wills do not expire. A will signed decades ago carries the same legal force as one signed last week, provided it was properly executed and never revoked. No state imposes a shelf life, and there is no requirement to re-sign, renew, or re-file the document after any number of years. What can happen, and often does, is that the will stops matching the life it was written for. The document stays valid; the results it produces drift away from what you intended.
That gap between “still legal” and “still works” is where nearly every problem with an old will lives.
Why Time Causes Trouble Even Without an Expiration Date
The passage of years creates practical problems that don’t touch the will’s legal status but can slow probate to a crawl. Witnesses die or become unreachable, making authenticity harder to prove. Ink fades and paper deteriorates. The executor you named twenty years ago may no longer be willing or able to serve, or may have died before you. None of this invalidates the will, but each issue gives unhappy family members an opening to challenge it and gives the probate court more work to do before assets can be distributed.
Life Events That Quietly Change What Your Will Does
A will reflects the family, the assets, and the law that existed the day you signed it. Several common events can override provisions in your will without you doing a thing.
Marriage
Marrying after you sign a will creates a problem if the will doesn’t mention or provide for your new spouse. A handful of states treat marriage as a full revocation of any prior will. Most states leave the existing will in place but give the new spouse a share of the estate, often equal to what they would have received if you had died without a will at all.
Surviving spouses also have independent protections that operate no matter what the will says. Most states give a surviving spouse the right to claim an “elective share” of the estate, commonly ranging from about one-third to one-half. A will that tries to disinherit a spouse won’t accomplish that goal in most of the country.
Divorce
Divorce cuts the other direction. Under the rule followed in most states, finalizing a divorce automatically revokes every provision in your will that benefits your former spouse, including gifts, executor appointments, and powers of attorney. The will is read as though your ex-spouse predeceased you. Provisions benefiting other people remain intact. Separation alone, without a final decree, usually changes nothing.
Children Born or Adopted After Signing
If you have a child after signing your will and the will doesn’t mention or provide for that child, most states have pretermitted heir statutes that step in. These laws assume the omission was accidental and award the overlooked child a share of the estate, typically equal to what they would have received under intestacy law. 1Legal Information Institute. Pretermitted Heir The same protection often extends to children adopted after the will was written. If you deliberately leave a child out, the safer practice is to name them and state that the omission is intentional.
Death of a Beneficiary or Executor
When someone named in your will dies before you do, the provisions involving that person generally fail. A gift to a deceased beneficiary may lapse entirely or pass to that person’s descendants under anti-lapse statutes, depending on the relationship and your state’s rules. If your named executor dies first, the court appoints a replacement, but that replacement is someone you didn’t choose. Naming alternates for both roles solves the problem before it starts.
Selling or Losing the Property You Left Someone
A will that leaves a specific piece of property to a beneficiary creates a problem if you no longer own that property when you die. Under the doctrine of ademption, the gift simply fails and the beneficiary gets nothing in its place. 2Legal Information Institute. Ademption You sell the lake house and buy a condo, but the will still says “I leave my lake house to my sister.” Your sister receives nothing from that provision, even if you clearly would have wanted her to have the replacement. Some states soften this by allowing the beneficiary to take replacement property or sale proceeds, but the traditional rule is harsh.
The Assets Your Will Never Controlled in the First Place
This is where the most damaging estate planning mistakes happen, and it has nothing to do with an old will. Certain assets transfer at death based on ownership structure or beneficiary designations, and your will has no authority over them.
Beneficiary Designations
Life insurance policies, 401(k)s, IRAs, annuities, and accounts with payable-on-death or transfer-on-death designations all pass directly to whoever is named on the account’s beneficiary form. If your will says your son inherits your IRA but the beneficiary form on file lists your daughter, your daughter gets the IRA. The financial institution follows its own records, and courts consistently enforce that priority.
For employer-sponsored retirement plans like 401(k)s, federal law makes the designation even more ironclad. ERISA preempts state law, meaning a plan must pay the designated beneficiary regardless of what a will, a trust, or even a divorce decree says. The only way to change who receives those assets is to update the beneficiary form with the plan administrator.
Jointly Owned Property
Property held as joint tenants with right of survivorship passes automatically to the surviving owner. The transfer happens by operation of law, doesn’t go through probate, and isn’t governed by your will. Add one child as joint owner on your house, and that child inherits the entire property when you die, even if your will divides everything equally among all your children.
The assets your will actually controls are the ones without a built-in transfer mechanism: personal property like furniture and jewelry, real estate held in your name alone, and bank or investment accounts with no TOD or POD designation. People who diligently update their will while ignoring outdated beneficiary forms can end up with an estate plan that contradicts itself.
Moving to a Different State
A will that was valid where you signed it is generally recognized in your new state, but the laws governing how it’s interpreted and enforced can change significantly. The biggest issue is the divide between community property states and common law states.
Nine states use community property rules: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. In these states, most assets acquired during a marriage belong equally to both spouses. The remaining states follow common law, where assets generally belong to whoever earned them or holds title. Moving between the two systems changes what each spouse is considered to own at death, which directly affects what a will can distribute.
States also differ on witness requirements, executor qualifications, self-proving affidavit rules, and the size of the spousal elective share. An out-of-state will that names a non-resident executor may run into trouble if the new state restricts who can serve. A review with an estate attorney in the new state after a move is one of the most practical steps you can take.
The 2026 Federal Estate Tax Change
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act raised the federal estate tax exemption to $15 million per individual starting in 2026, with inflation adjustments beginning in 2027. 3Internal Revenue Service. What’s New — Estate and Gift Tax For married couples, up to $30 million can pass free of federal estate tax. Unlike the earlier Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, this increase has no built-in sunset date.
For most families, federal estate tax is no longer a concern at all. But wills and trusts drafted around the older, lower exemption amounts may contain provisions that no longer make sense. Plans that used credit shelter or bypass trusts to maximize a now-obsolete exemption can produce awkward results, like funding a trust with far more money than intended or leaving a surviving spouse with less accessible cash than planned. If your will or trust references specific dollar thresholds or was built to minimize estate tax, it’s worth checking whether the strategy still fits.
How to Update or Revoke a Will
You have three options: amend the existing will with a codicil, replace it with a new will, or destroy it.
A codicil is a separate document that modifies specific provisions of an existing will and must be signed and witnessed with the same formalities as the original. Codicils work well for small updates, like changing an executor or adjusting a dollar amount. Stacking two or three of them creates confusion, and at that point a new will is cleaner.
For substantial changes, a new will is more reliable than patching the old one. The new will should explicitly state that it revokes all prior wills and codicils. Without that language, a court may try to reconcile the old and new documents, reading the new one as revoking only the provisions that directly conflict. 4Legal Information Institute. Intestate Succession
A will can also be revoked by physically destroying it (tearing, burning, or shredding) as long as you intend to revoke it when you do so. Both elements matter: the physical act and the intent. 5Legal Information Institute. Revocation of Will by Act Spilling coffee on your will doesn’t revoke it. This method is risky in practice: if the original can’t be found after your death, some courts presume you destroyed it intentionally while others admit a copy, and the ambiguity invites litigation. A new will with an express revocation clause is almost always the better path.
Whenever you sign a new will or codicil, ask about attaching a self-proving affidavit. It’s a sworn statement signed by your witnesses and notarized, confirming they watched you sign the will freely and while of sound mind. 6Legal Information Institute. Self-Proving Will The affidavit eliminates the need for witnesses to appear in court during probate, which becomes valuable when witnesses have moved away or died by the time the will is used.
What Happens if Your Will Fails
If a will is revoked, successfully challenged, or never existed, the estate falls to state intestacy law. These statutes follow a rigid hierarchy: surviving spouse first, then children, then parents, then siblings, and outward from there. 4Legal Information Institute. Intestate Succession Specific shares vary by state, and the framework leaves no room for personal preferences.
Intestacy produces predictably bad outcomes in specific situations. Unmarried partners receive nothing, because no state’s intestacy law recognizes them. Stepchildren you never formally adopted are excluded. Friends and charities get nothing, while a relative you haven’t spoken to in decades may inherit a significant share. The probate process itself also tends to be slower and more expensive without a will, because the court must appoint an administrator and may require a bond.
How Often to Review Your Will
Estate planning attorneys generally recommend a review at least every three to five years, even if nothing dramatic has changed. Beyond that schedule, any major life event should trigger an immediate look: marriage, divorce, the birth of a child or grandchild, a significant inheritance, a move to a new state, the death of someone named in the will, or a change in the tax law like the 2026 exemption increase.
A review doesn’t always mean a rewrite. Sometimes you’ll confirm that everything still works. But the review should reach beyond the will itself to beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance, ownership structures on real estate and bank accounts, and whether your named executor and guardians are still the right choices. The will is one piece of the plan, and it’s usually the piece that gets the most attention while the beneficiary forms quietly fall out of date.