Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: a codicil has to be signed and witnessed with exactly the same ceremony as a will — Florida says so in one sentence — so it saves you no formality, only retyping. That makes a codicil worth it in a narrow case (one clean change to a document that is otherwise correct and properly executed) and a bad idea in most others, because it leaves two documents that both have to survive, both have to be found, and both have to be read together.
A codicil is not a lesser document. It is a will.
This is the point everything else follows from, and it is statutory, not folklore. Florida puts it in a single line: “A codicil shall be executed with the same formalities as a will.” (Fla. Stat. §732.502(5).) Uniform Probate Code states get to the same place through the definitions — Minnesota’s says “‘Will’ includes an electronic will, any codicil to a will or electronic will, and any testamentary instrument which merely appoints an executor or revokes or revises another will” (Minn. Stat. §524.1-201(62)). Every execution rule in your state attaches to the codicil: the witness count, whether the witnesses may be beneficiaries, whether a notary does anything, whether a self-proving affidavit is available. Those rules are different in every state and we have them with the statute cited on each cell.
So the usual reason people reach for a codicil — it is only a small change, I do not want the whole production — does not exist. You are doing the whole production either way. The only thing a codicil saves is re-executing a document you are otherwise happy with.
What a new will actually does to the old one
Here is the part that decides the question, and it is more forgiving than most people expect. A new will does not have to say “I revoke all prior wills” to replace the old one. Minnesota’s enactment of the Uniform Probate Code rule sets up two presumptions:
If the new document disposes of everything, it replaces. “The testator is presumed to have intended a subsequent will to replace rather than supplement a previous will if the subsequent will makes a complete disposition of the testator’s estate. If this presumption arises and is not rebutted by clear and convincing evidence, the previous will is revoked; only the subsequent will is operative on the testator’s death.” (Minn. Stat. §524.2-507(c).)
If it does not, it supplements — and now you have two live documents. “The testator is presumed to have intended a subsequent will to supplement rather than replace a previous will if the subsequent will does not make a complete disposition… the subsequent will revokes the previous will only to the extent the subsequent will is inconsistent with the previous will; each will is fully operative on the testator’s death to the extent they are not inconsistent.” (Minn. Stat. §524.2-507(d).)
That second paragraph is a codicil, described by a statute that never uses the word. A codicil is by definition a partial disposition, so it lands in the supplement presumption: the old will stays fully operative except where the codicil contradicts it. Florida says the same thing from the other direction — a later inconsistent will or codicil revokes the earlier one, but “the revocation extends only so far as the inconsistency” (Fla. Stat. §732.505(1)).
Which is fine when the two documents are read together, and expensive when they are not.
When a codicil is actually the right tool
Three cases, and they are narrower than the internet suggests:
One surgical change to a document you are confident in. Swapping a named executor, changing one dollar legacy, adding a guardian nomination. The rest of the will is correct and was executed properly.
The original will is attorney-drafted, complex, and expensive to redo. A trust-funding will with detailed dispositive provisions is not something to retype for the sake of one line.
You want the change to be visible as a change. Occasionally that is the point — a documented amendment, dated, showing exactly what moved and when.
Against that, the failure modes are all versions of the same problem: two pieces of paper. The codicil goes in a different drawer than the will. The codicil is found and the will is not, or the reverse. The codicil is executed with two witnesses in a state that requires them to sign in each other’s presence, and nobody checks. A later reader has to reconcile two documents rather than read one.
A note on what we are not telling you. You will read elsewhere that a codicil “republishes” the underlying will as of the codicil’s date, which can matter for a will that was defective when signed. That doctrine comes from case law, not from any statute quoted on this page, and it does not apply the same way everywhere. We are not going to state it as a rule.
The honest default, and the cost that decides it
For most people, with most wills, a new will is the better instrument — not because a codicil is invalid, but because one document that says everything beats two documents that have to be read together, and the execution ceremony is identical either way. The exception is the complex attorney-drafted will, where the drafting cost is the whole cost.
What that costs is not a mystery: what a will costs, by route and by state, and when a form is genuinely the wrong tool. If a form does fit, the paid products are compared here with prices we read ourselves, and there are genuinely free routes we earn nothing from.
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Before you sign either one
Whichever instrument you use, the execution rules are the ones that void documents: whether a notary is required at all (usually not, and the notary belongs on the self-proving affidavit instead), whether a beneficiary can witness (in some states that voids their gift, in one it can void the will), and whether handwriting counts. If you are amending because life changed rather than because you spotted a typo, start at what actually triggers an update — some of those triggers are already handled by statute and need no document at all.
Sources, and what we did not verify
Fla. Stat. §732.502 (execution of wills, incl. subsection (5) on codicils) and §732.505 (revocation by writing), read at the Florida Senate’s official statutes site on 2026-08-06. Minn. Stat. §524.1-201 (definitions) and §524.2-507 (revocation by writing or by act), read at the Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes the same day. Per-state execution requirements come from our own 44-state statutory library, each cell cited to the state’s own code.
What we did not verify: New York’s revocation statute (EPTL 3-4.1) is quoted nowhere on this page because nysenate.gov returned a bot-protection block to us today. Florida and Minnesota are quoted because we read them.
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.