Updated August 1, 2026. Quick answer: in 43 of the 44 states we have read the statute for, a notary is not what makes a will valid. Witnesses are. The notary belongs to the self-proving affidavit, which is a separate optional document that spares your witnesses a trip to probate court. Getting a will notarised and skipping the witnesses is the single most common way people invalidate a document they paid for. Four states break the usual pattern: Pennsylvania requires no witnesses at all; Colorado and North Dakota let a notary stand in for the witnesses rather than sit alongside them; Louisiana genuinely does require a notary for its main will form, because its law is civil-law rather than common-law.
Your state
The five things that decide whether a will works
Almost every consumer page on this subject answers one of these and implies the rest. They differ by state independently of each other, which is why they need a table rather than a paragraph.
- How many witnesses, and whether they must watch you sign or can take your word that the signature is yours.
- What happens if a witness inherits — the detail that quietly destroys home-made wills, because the obvious people to ask are the people in the will.
- Whether a notary is needed for validity (almost never) as opposed to for the self-proving affidavit (usually).
- Whether a handwritten will counts without any witnesses at all.
- Whether an electronic will counts, which is now a real split rather than a novelty.
The beneficiary-witness trap
Of the 40 states where we have read the interested-witness statute, 25 apply a purging rule: the will survives, but the gift to the witness is void or cut back. 14 treat it as a non-event. 1 take a stricter line that can put the will itself at risk. The practical rule is the same in all three groups and costs nothing: use witnesses who inherit nothing. There is no state where a disinterested witness is worse.
The strict states are worth naming because the outcome is severe: Arizona.
The table
44 states, 243 of 264 cells verified against statutory text this week. Where a cell says “not yet verified” it means exactly that — we could not read the provision at an official source, so we are not going to tell you what it says.
| State | Witnesses | If a witness inherits | Notary for validity | Handwritten | Electronic | Execution statute |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | No | AS 13.12.502(a)(3) |
| Alabama | 2 | No effect | No | No | No | Ala. Code § 43-8-131 |
| Arizona | 2 | Witness disqualified | No | Yes | Yes (own statute) | A.R.S. § 14-2502(A) |
| California | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | No | Cal. Prob. Code § 6110(c)(1) |
| Colorado | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | Yes (Uniform Act) | C.R.S. § 15-11-502(1)(c)(I) |
| Connecticut | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | Conn. Gen. Stat. § 45a-251 |
| District of Columbia | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | Yes (Uniform Act) | D.C. Code § 18-103 |
| Delaware | 2 | No effect | No | No | not yet verified | 12 Del. C. § 202 |
| Florida | 2 | No effect | No | No | Yes (own statute) | Fla. Stat. § 732.502(1)(b) |
| Hawaii | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | No | HRS § 560:2-502(a)(3) |
| Iowa | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | not yet verified | Iowa Code § 633.279(1) |
| Idaho | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | Yes (Uniform Act) | Idaho Code § 15-2-502 |
| Illinois | 2 | Gift purged | No | not yet verified | not yet verified | 755 ILCS 5/4-3 |
| Kansas | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | K.S.A. 59-606 |
| Kentucky | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | not yet verified | KRS 394.040 |
| Louisiana | 2 plus a notary (notarial testament); none for a handwritten one | Gift purged | Yes, for a notarial testament | Yes | No | La. Civ. Code arts. 1574, 1576 |
| Massachusetts | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | not yet verified | M.G.L. c.190B, § 2-502 |
| Maryland | 2 | not yet verified | No | Only in narrow cases | Yes (own statute) | Md. Code, Est. & Trusts § 4-102(b)(3) |
| Maine | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | No | 18-C M.R.S. § 2-502(3) |
| Michigan | 2 | not yet verified | No | Yes | not yet verified | MCL 700.2502(1)(c) |
| Minnesota | 2 | No effect | No | No | Yes (Uniform Act) | Minn. Stat. § 524.2-502 |
| Missouri | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | Yes (own statute) | Mo. Rev. Stat. § 474.320 |
| Montana | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | No | Mont. Code Ann. § 72-2-522(1)(c) |
| North Carolina | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | No | N.C.G.S. § 31-3.3(a) |
| North Dakota | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | Yes (Uniform Act) | N.D.C.C. 30.1-08-02(1) |
| Nebraska | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | not yet verified | Neb. Rev. Stat. § 30-2327 |
| New Hampshire | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | RSA 551:2, I |
| New Jersey | 2 | not yet verified | No | not yet verified | not yet verified | N.J.S.A. 3B:3-2 |
| Nevada | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | Yes (own statute) | NRS 133.040 |
| New York | 2 | Gift purged | No | Only in narrow cases | Yes (own statute) | EPTL § 3-2.1 |
| Ohio | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | ORC 2107.03 |
| Oklahoma | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | not yet verified | 84 O.S. § 55 |
| Oregon | 2 | No effect | No | Only in narrow cases | No | ORS 112.235(1)(b) |
| Pennsylvania | None required | not yet verified | No | Yes | No | 20 Pa.C.S. § 2502 |
| Rhode Island | 2 | Gift purged | No | Only in narrow cases | not yet verified | R.I. Gen. Laws § 33-5-5 |
| South Carolina | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | S.C. Code Ann. § 62-2-502 |
| Texas | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | No | Tex. Est. Code § 251.051(3) |
| Utah | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | Yes (Uniform Act) | Utah Code § 75-2-502(1)(c) |
| Virginia | 2 | No effect | No | Yes | No | Va. Code § 64.2-403(C) |
| Vermont | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | 14 V.S.A. § 5 |
| Washington | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | Yes (Uniform Act) | RCW 11.12.020 |
| Wisconsin | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | Wis. Stat. § 853.03(2)(am) |
| West Virginia | 2 | Gift purged | No | No | No | W. Va. Code § 41-1-3 |
| Wyoming | 2 | Gift purged | No | Yes | Remote witnessing only | Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 2-6-112(a) |
What is missing, and why we are saying so
States not in the table yet, and exactly why. Each of these has a statute; what is missing is our reading of it at an official source. Nothing here is guessed from a neighbouring state.
- AR — arkleg.state.ar.us serves no static code viewer (HTTP 500) and routes its official code to a session-gated LexisNexis portal that returned no statutory text.
- GA — Georgia’s official code is distributed under an exclusive LexisNexis arrangement; the public-access portal required sign-in and legis.ga.gov exposed no readable full-text code search.
- IN — iga.in.gov serves only an empty JavaScript shell (CloudFront error) for the Title 29 wills chapter; the only reachable official text was a 2018-compilation PDF via a web-archive cache, whose current amendment status cannot be confirmed – so it was not used.
- MS — legislature.ms.gov failed TLS certificate verification on every host and path tried, https and http.
- NM — nmonesource.com, the official New Mexico statute source, returned HTTP 403 on every path (bot-protection block); nmlegis.gov links out to it rather than hosting the text.
- SD — sdlegislature.gov is a client-side-rendered app; every fetch returned the JavaScript shell with no statutory text.
- TN — Official publisher (advance.lexis.com) and capitol.tn.gov both require JavaScript/session rendering that could not be executed.
7 state code publishers defeated us: some put the official code behind a commercial sign-in, some serve a JavaScript shell with no readable text, one returns a broken certificate chain and one blocks automated readers outright. Those are the honest reasons, and they are reasons about access rather than about the law. Each will be added when its text can be read, not before.
What this page cannot tell you
Formalities are necessary, not sufficient. A perfectly witnessed will still fails if the testator lacked capacity, was unduly influenced, or revoked it later. And a valid will does not avoid probate — it directs it. If avoiding probate is the goal, the will is the wrong instrument to be optimising: what actually happens after a death sets out the sequence, and beneficiary designations override the will entirely on the accounts that carry them, which surprises most people.
On cost and route: what a will costs, when DIY is and is not defensible, and what a trust adds over a will.
Two execution questions the table does not cover
- Can a beneficiary witness a will? The rule that voids the gift
- Is a handwritten will valid? The states that accept one
Method
Every cell was read at the state legislature’s or official state code publisher’s own website. Secondary sources — including the aggregator sites that dominate these search results — were not used as sources of fact at any point, and no cell was inferred from a neighbouring state or from a uniform act the state may or may not have adopted. This is why the table has holes in it: the holes are the method working. General information, not legal advice; statutes change, and a will is executed under the law of the place where it is signed.
Once you know what your state requires
The table above is the execution standard your will has to meet, and it applies whatever the document cost. LawDepot builds a state-specific last will and testament; the signing and witnessing rules on this page still govern it.
LawDepot pays us a commission if you buy through this link — it costs you nothing extra. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Affiliate Disclosure.
Before you pay for anything: Maine and Wisconsin print a will form in their own statute, and a handwritten or self-typed will is valid anywhere it is executed correctly. The genuinely free routes to a valid will — including the ones we earn nothing from.
Once you know your state’s rules, the software question is next. We read all five major will-making products’ own published prices and terms on August 6, 2026 — including the one we earn a commission from — at online will makers compared. One of them publishes that it cannot serve Louisiana at all: the WillMaker review quotes it.
After the will is signed: the life-cycle. A codicil has to be executed with the same formalities as the will itself, which is why a codicil is usually the wrong tool, and most of the events people think revoke a will do not — what actually triggers an update.
The dataset behind this page
Added August 6, 2026. Everything above is computed from a statute library we read ourselves: 44 jurisdictions, 243 statute-verified fields, each carrying its own citation, its source URL and its own confidence flag. It is published here as a citable dataset because nobody else publishes this comparison with the statute attached to every cell.
What the 44 jurisdictions show. Two witnesses is close to universal — 43 of 44 require exactly two, and the exception is Pennsylvania, which requires none for a signed will. Two states, Colorado and North Dakota, let a notarial acknowledgment stand as an alternative to witnesses altogether. Louisiana is the one jurisdiction in our library where a notary is required for the main form to be valid at all; in the other 43 a notary is not required for validity, which is the single most common misconception about wills.
The interested-witness rule is where states genuinely disagree, and it is the field most likely to cost a beneficiary money. Of the 40 jurisdictions where we read it: 25 purge (the gift to the witness is void or reduced, the will survives), 14 have no effect (the witness may inherit and the will stands), and one — Arizona — can invalidate, because its 2019 amendment makes a devisee or their relative incompetent to serve as one of the two required witnesses on a non-self-proved will.
Handwritten and electronic wills split the country. Holographic wills: 21 recognise, 17 do not, 4 recognise them only in limited circumstances. Electronic wills: 14 recognise, 20 do not, and 10 we could not verify — the fastest-moving field in the dataset and the one most likely to be stale first. Self-proving affidavits exist in 37 of the 40 where we read it, which matters because that affidavit is what lets a will be admitted without tracking down witnesses years later.
What is not here, and why that is the point. Seven jurisdictions are missing from the library, each for a stated access reason rather than an omission: Georgia (code behind an exclusive publisher portal), Tennessee and South Dakota (JavaScript-only official sites), Indiana (empty shell), Arkansas (no static code viewer), Mississippi (TLS failure) and New Mexico (bot-blocked). 21 individual fields inside the 44 are flagged not_verified with the barrier named. A dataset that shows you its own gaps is the only kind worth citing.
Download the CSV — free under CC BY 4.0, one row per jurisdiction, every field with its citation, URL and confidence.
Cite as: Clear Money Guide, US Will Execution Law 2026, 2026. https://clearmoneyguide.com/will-requirements-by-state/
More computed data: the cost of dying index and the data library. Method and limits: methodology, corrections.
Before the execution rules matter, people ask how unusual it is not to have one at all. About 46% of adults have a will, rising to 76% at 65 and over: the age gradient behind the headline.