Updated September 7, 2026. Quick answer: In Kentucky, you have 2 years to contest a will that has already been admitted to probate, running from the District Court’s order admitting (or refusing to admit) the will to probate.
How long do you have to contest a will in Kentucky?
| Deadline to contest an admitted will | 2 years |
| What starts the clock | the District Court’s order admitting (or refusing to admit) the will to probate |
| Dedicated will-contest statute? | Yes |
“Any person aggrieved by the order of the District Court probating a will, or refusing to probate a will, may contest the validity of the will, or resist the probate thereof, by an original action in the Circuit Court of the county in which the order was made, provided such action is brought within two (2) years after the order of the District Court.”
Source: KRS 394.240
What makes Kentucky different
Kentucky’s 2-year window is markedly longer than most neighboring states, and the mechanism is a brand-new original action in Circuit Court; essentially a full re-trial of the will’s validity; rather than a motion filed in the existing probate case. The controlling authority is KRS 394.240, and the window runs from the District Court’s order admitting (or refusing to admit) the will to probate.
A note on sourcing: The official statute page served an unreadable binary export on direct fetch; the quote above is reconstructed from converging channels (the official site’s statute title/ID, a Justia-indexed snippet, and the Kentucky Supreme Court’s own quotation of the statute in West v. Goldstein) rather than one unbroken verbatim read.
What happens once this deadline passes?
Once the window above closes, Kentucky’s probate of the will generally becomes final and binding on everyone who had the chance to object, subject only to the tolling or discovery exceptions described above; a separate objection Kentucky allowed at the original probate hearing does not reopen or extend it.
Sources
| Statute / rule | KRS 394.240 |
| Kentucky courts (general reference) | Kentucky judicial branch |
| Confidence | Medium |
Every statute or rule quoted on this Kentucky page was read directly from the state’s own legislature/court/code site this session, or, where that site blocked automated access, from a reputable legal-citation mirror quoting the same official text with its official citation (disclosed below). General information, not legal advice; whether a specific contest is still timely can turn on facts (exactly when notice was given, how the will was probated, whether a disability applies) that only your own Kentucky probate court file can confirm.