Free Will Forms

Updated August 4, 2026. Quick answer: a free will can be perfectly valid. Three states put a fill-in-the-blank will form into their own statute, several more recognise a handwritten will with no witnesses at all, and a will you write yourself is valid anywhere if it is executed the way your state requires. Cost is not what decides validity — execution is. This page lists the genuinely free routes first, including the ones we earn nothing from.

States that put a will form in the statute

A statutory will is a form printed in the state’s own code. You fill it in, execute it as the statute directs, and it is a will — no lawyer, no software, no fee.

Maine — 18-C M.R.S. § 2-517

Read from the Maine Legislature on 2026-08-04. The statute is titled Statutory wills and opens:

“Any person may execute a will on the following form, and the will must be presumed to be reasonable.”

The form itself follows in the statute.

Wisconsin — Wis. Stat. ch. 853, subch. II

Read from the Wisconsin Legislature on 2026-08-04. An entire subchapter headed “WISCONSIN BASIC WILLS”, running §§ 853.50–853.59 — execution (853.51), contents (853.52), selecting the property-disposition clause (853.53), revocation (853.54), and two forms: 853.55 Wisconsin basic will and 853.56 Wisconsin basic will with trust.

California — Prob. Code § 6240

California’s statutory will is the best known of the three. We are not quoting it here: the state’s code viewer renders its text with JavaScript and the section body did not extract on 2026-08-04, so we have the citation but did not read the words. The section is real and easily found on the state’s own site — we simply do not print statutory text we have not read.

Reported, not verified

Michigan and New Mexico are commonly listed as statutory-will states as well. Neither was verified in this edition and neither is presented as fact here. They are named so you know where to look, not so you can cite us.

The free routes that are not forms

• A holographic (handwritten) will. Written entirely in your own hand, and in the states that recognise one, valid with no witnesses. It is also the easiest to get wrong — see when a handwritten will is valid.
• A will you type yourself. There is no requirement to buy a form. What there is, is a requirement to execute it correctly: witness counts and notarisation by state.
• Your employer, union, bank or legal-aid plan. Many group legal plans include a simple will at no extra cost, and most people who have one do not know it.
• Veterans and service members. Legal assistance offices prepare wills free for those eligible — see also veterans’ burial benefits, which are routinely unclaimed.
• Nonprofit-funded will platforms. Genuinely free to you, funded by the charities they partner with. That is a real business model, not a catch, and it is worth understanding before assuming free means unaligned.

What free does not buy you

Every route above produces a document. None of them makes the document valid — that is your state’s execution statute, and it is where free wills actually fail. The three questions that decide it:

• How many witnesses does your state require, and must they be present together?
• Can a beneficiary witness it — in several states doing so voids the gift to that witness.
• Is notarisation required, or only useful for a self-proving affidavit?

Get those three right and a free will works. Get one wrong and the most expensive will ever drafted would have worked better. If you have no will at all, the state’s intestacy statute is what applies instead.

When free is the wrong answer

A form — free or paid — is the wrong tool for a blended family, a disabled beneficiary, a business, property in two states, or an estate large enough to face estate tax. The case for a lawyer sets out why without pretending one is always necessary, and the gap-first checklist names which gaps your own situation creates.

Where a form genuinely does fit and you would rather not draft it yourself, the paid products are compared here, with prices quoted only where we read them, and our one affiliate relationship disclosed in the table.

Make a will at LawDepot

That is a sponsored link, marked as one, and it appears after the free options rather than instead of them — including the free options we earn nothing from. See our affiliate disclosure.

How this page is sourced

Maine and Wisconsin were read from their own legislatures’ websites on 2026-08-04 and are quoted. California is cited but not quoted, because we could not extract its text. Michigan and New Mexico are named and explicitly not verified. Statutory-will provisions are amended like any other statute; the read date is stated so you can check whether it has moved. Per-state execution requirements, with the statute cited and the date read, are at will requirements by state. What a will costs by route: how much does a will cost. Method: methodology. Mistakes: corrections. The whole machine: estate planning.