Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: there are two statutory routes — a later document, or a physical act done with intent to revoke — and only one of them is safe. Destroying the will works legally and fails practically, because it leaves nothing behind that says what you wanted instead. Two traps do most of the damage: crossing out one line, and destroying one copy of a will that was signed in duplicate.
The two routes, in the statutes
The Uniform Probate Code rule, as Minnesota enacts it: “A will or any part thereof is revoked: (1) by executing a subsequent will that revokes the previous will or part expressly or by inconsistency; or (2) by performing a revocatory act, if the testator performed the act with the intent and for the purpose of revoking the will or part or if another individual performed the act in the testator’s conscious presence and by the testator’s direction… ‘revocatory act’ includes burning, tearing, canceling, obliterating, or destroying the will or any part of it. A burning, tearing, or canceling may be a ‘revocatory act,’ whether or not the burn, tear, or cancellation touched any of the words on the will.” (Minn. Stat. §524.2-507(a).) Michigan’s is the same rule in the same words (MCL §700.2507(1)).
California, outside the UPC, gets there in two lines: a will “or any part thereof” is revoked by a subsequent will that revokes it expressly or by inconsistency, or by “being burned, torn, canceled, obliterated, or destroyed, with the intent and for the purpose of revoking it” by the testator or by another person in the testator’s presence and at their direction (Cal. Prob. Code §6120).
Two things in those quotes are worth slowing down for. The act must be done with intent to revoke — a will damaged in a flood is not revoked. And in the UPC states, the burn or tear need not touch a single word: a torn corner can be enough if the intent was there. Which is also why an accidentally torn will creates an argument nobody wants to have.
The trap: crossing out one line
Striking through a beneficiary’s name is the most common home revocation, and it is the one that produces litigation. Two separate problems.
First, whether a partial act works at all is not uniform. Minnesota and California both say “a will or any part thereof”. Florida’s two sections are worth reading side by side: its revocation-by-writing section says a will or codicil “or any part of either” is revoked (Fla. Stat. §732.505), while its revocation-by-act section drops that phrase entirely — “A will or codicil, other than an electronic will, is revoked by the testator… by burning, tearing, canceling, defacing, obliterating, or destroying it” (§732.506). That is a difference in the text of one state’s own code, in the same chapter. Some states permit partial revocation by act, some do not, and you cannot tell which from the word “revoked”.
Second, even where it works, it does not do what you want. Crossing out a gift does not redirect it to the person you would have preferred. It removes the gift, and the property falls into the residue or, if you crossed out the residuary clause, toward intestacy — where the legislature decides, not you. Every state we read requires the same ceremony to add anything: a signed and witnessed document. There is no such thing as a valid handwritten amendment to a witnessed will, in most states.
The trap nobody warns about: duplicate originals
If your will was signed in duplicate — two originals, one for you and one for the lawyer’s file — destroying your copy can revoke both. California says so in terms: “A will executed in duplicate or any part thereof is revoked if one of the duplicates is burned, torn, canceled, obliterated, or destroyed, with the intent and for the purpose of revoking it.” (Cal. Prob. Code §6121.) The reverse is the version that hurts: you destroy your copy meaning to revoke, the lawyer’s original is produced at your death, and now the question is what you intended — answered by a court, from evidence, after you are gone.
And if the will simply cannot be found
Most states presume you destroyed it. California’s formulation: “If the testator’s will was last in the testator’s possession, the testator was competent until death, and neither the will nor a duplicate original of the will can be found after the testator’s death, it is presumed that the testator destroyed the will with intent to revoke it. This presumption is a presumption affecting the burden of producing evidence.” (Cal. Prob. Code §6124.)
Three conditions, all required, and a presumption that can be rebutted — but the burden lands on whoever says the will still stood. This is the reason a will you cannot locate is a live problem even when nobody has done anything wrong.
How to actually revoke a will
Execute a new will that expressly revokes all prior wills and codicils. That is the whole method. It resolves the partial-act question (there is nothing partial about it), it survives the duplicate-original problem, it leaves a document that says what you want instead of a hole, and the express revocation clause removes any argument about whether the new one supplements or replaces the old — the difference the presumptions turn on.
Then destroy every copy of the old will you can find, tell the person holding any other copy that it is superseded, and make sure the new one can be found. Do not revoke without replacing: a revoked will with nothing behind it means the state’s intestacy statute writes your estate plan, and what that produces is rarely what people assume.
Remember also what a will never reached in the first place. Revoking it does nothing to retirement accounts and life insurance, which pass by beneficiary form, or to jointly-titled property. And if you are revoking because of a divorce, much of that may already have happened by statute.
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Sources, and what we did not verify
Minn. Stat. §524.2-507 (revocation by writing or by act), read at the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes on 2026-08-06. Cal. Prob. Code §§6120, 6121 and 6124, read at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov the same day. Fla. Stat. §§732.505 and 732.506, read at the Florida Senate the same day. MCL §700.2507, read at the Michigan Legislature the same day.
What we did not verify: New York. EPTL 3-4.1 is the section that governs revocation there and nysenate.gov returned a bot-protection block to every request we made today, so it is neither quoted nor characterised on this page. States differ on partial revocation by physical act and we are not going to guess at a state we could not read. Revival of a revoked will — what happens when you revoke the revoking document — is a separate statutory question we have not covered here.
See methodology, editorial policy and corrections. General information about how these statutes read, not legal advice for your estate — probate codes are amended every session and the read date above is what you are relying on.