How to write a will: the six decisions that come before the drafting
What is yours to leave, who gets what when an asset cannot be divided, who does the work, who looks after the children and their money, how to make unequal shares stick — and the things wills forget.
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Start here: is this asset yours to leave?
Run every significant asset through this before you decide who gets it. A will that gives away something the testator could not dispose of produces a dispute, not a gift.
How did you come to own it?
- I bought it with my own money
Self-acquired. You can leave all of it, to anyone.
There is no forced heirship rule under the Hindu Succession Act — no child or spouse is entitled to a minimum share of self-acquired property. Section 30 confirms that a Hindu may dispose by will of any property capable of being so disposed of.
- I inherited it absolutely, under a will or on an intestacy
Yours absolutely. You can leave all of it.
Property inherited by a Class I heir is taken absolutely, not as a limited estate, and no descendant acquires a right in it by birth. This is the answer for most property that families loosely call “ancestral”.
- It is coparcenary property of a joint Hindu family
You can leave your own undivided interest in it — not the property.
The Explanation to Section 30 deems a coparcener’s interest capable of being disposed of by will. Describe it as your undivided share or interest. Establish first that the property really is coparcenary, because most families are wrong about this.
What coparcenary actually means → - It is held jointly with someone else
How is the title actually held?
- As tenants-in-common — the normal position between Indian co-owners
Your share can be willed.
Section 19(b) of the Hindu Succession Act provides that two or more heirs succeeding together take as tenants-in-common and not as joint tenants. A share held that way passes under your will.
- With a genuine right of survivorship
Your will cannot reach it.
The interest passes to the surviving holder by the operation of the arrangement rather than under the will. Check the actual title document rather than assuming either way.
- As tenants-in-common — the normal position between Indian co-owners
- It has a registered nominee
You can leave it, and the will decides who owns it.
But the institution will still pay the nominee, who then holds for whoever the will names. Make the will and the nomination point at the same person, or the family ends up holding money it is not free to spend.
Nominee against legal heir → - It is a partnership interest or a controlling shareholding
Yours to leave, subject to the deed or the articles.
A partnership deed may restrict who can be admitted as a partner, and articles may restrict transfer. A will directing something the constitutional documents forbid produces a claim for value rather than the asset. Read them before drafting.
Where any answer is “I am not sure”, that asset is the reason to take advice. It is also the reason to write a simple will this week anyway — an incomplete will is worth far more than no will.
A Hindu may leave self-acquired property to anyone. There is no minimum share that must go to a child or a spouse.
Section 30 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 provides that any Hindu may dispose of by will or other testamentary disposition any property capable of being so disposed of, in accordance with the Indian Succession Act, 1925 or any other law applicable to Hindus. The Explanation adds that a coparcener’s interest in Mitakshara coparcenary property is deemed capable of being so disposed of. The limit is on what is capable of disposition, not on who may receive it. The position under Muslim personal law is fundamentally different, and nothing here carries across to it.
SourceHindu Succession Act, 1956 — s. 30(opens in a new tab)Hindu Succession Act, 1956 — s. 19(opens in a new tab)Indian Succession Act, 1925 — s. 59(opens in a new tab)
The rules of intestate succession on this page are those of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956. Section 2 of that Act applies it to Hindus in any form or development of the religion — including Virashaiva, Lingayat, Brahmo, Prarthana and Arya Samaj followers — and to Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs, as well as to anyone domiciled in India who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew by religion. Section 2(2) provides that the Act does not apply to members of a Scheduled Tribe within the meaning of Article 366(25) of the Constitution unless the Central Government directs otherwise by notification. Muslim succession is governed by Muslim personal law, and Christian and Parsi succession by their own Parts of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 — different heirs, different shares, and in the Christian and Parsi case a different statute. Nothing on this page about who inherits, or in what share, carries over to them. The procedure pages — legal heir certificate, succession certificate, probate — apply whatever your personal law, because they are about proving who the heirs are rather than deciding it.
The hard part of writing a will is not the drafting — the format page on this site has the sample and the generator. The hard part is six decisions you have to make first: what you are actually entitled to leave, who gets what and whether the shares are equal, who will be the executor, who will look after a minor child, what happens to a business or a jointly-owned asset that cannot simply be divided, and how you will reduce the chance of a challenge. Almost every will that ends up in court failed at one of those six points, not at the drafting table. This page is about the decisions. Once you have made them, the format page turns them into a document in an afternoon.
Key takeaways
- Work out what is yours to leave before anything else. Self-acquired property can be willed freely; a share in ancestral coparcenary property means you can will only your own undivided interest; and jointly held property, a nominated policy and a co-operative society flat each have their own complication.
- Unequal shares are legitimate and they are the single biggest predictor of a challenge. If you are going to leave unequal shares, do it deliberately, say why in the will, and consider taking probate in your lifetime records — do not hope nobody notices.
- The executor is a working appointment, not an honour. Choose someone organised, younger than you, likely to be on speaking terms with everyone, and who has said yes. Then name an alternate.
- A guardianship clause is the reason many people write a will at all, and it is routinely left out. Name the guardian, name an alternate, and think separately about who controls the child’s money — the two need not be the same person.
- The single most effective anti-challenge measure costs nothing: tell the family what the will says while you are alive. Nearly every contested probate begins with a citation arriving at a house where nothing had been said.
The six decisions, in the order that works
Making them in this order saves rework, because each one constrains the next. None of them is about drafting — the drafting is an afternoon once these are settled.
- Office practice
- 1
What is yours to leave
Run every significant asset through the decision tree above. Self-acquired, inherited absolutely, coparcenary, jointly held, nominated, or constrained by a partnership deed — each behaves differently.
→ A list of what the will can actually dispose of
- 2
Who gets what
Including the hard part: what happens to an asset that cannot be divided. A house left to three children in equal shares is a decision deferred, not a decision made.
→ A distribution, and a mechanism for the indivisible assets
- 3
Who is the executor
A working appointment. Organised, younger than you, likely to stay on speaking terms with everyone, and has said yes. Then an alternate, because probate can be granted only to an executor appointed by the will.
→ Two names, both of whom have agreed
- 4
Who looks after the children, and their money
Two separate appointments that need not be the same person: the guardian of the person, and the guardian of the property. Plus the age at which capital is released.
→ Four names and a holding direction
- 5
How you reduce the chance of a challenge
A recital explaining unequal shares, witnesses unconnected to the beneficiaries, an independent hand in the drafting, a doctor’s note where capacity might be questioned — and telling the family.
→ A will that is hard to attack rather than merely valid
- 6
The things wills forget
Digital assets with real value, foreign property, the old provident fund, the vehicle, the locker contents, and money lent to a relative. The one-sheet asset list catches all of them.
→ A complete estate, and a map for the executor
- 1
What is yours to leave
Run every significant asset through the decision tree above. Self-acquired, inherited absolutely, coparcenary, jointly held, nominated, or constrained by a partnership deed — each behaves differently.
→ A list of what the will can actually dispose of
- 2
Who gets what
Including the hard part: what happens to an asset that cannot be divided. A house left to three children in equal shares is a decision deferred, not a decision made.
→ A distribution, and a mechanism for the indivisible assets
- 3
Who is the executor
A working appointment. Organised, younger than you, likely to stay on speaking terms with everyone, and has said yes. Then an alternate, because probate can be granted only to an executor appointed by the will.
→ Two names, both of whom have agreed
- 4
Who looks after the children, and their money
Two separate appointments that need not be the same person: the guardian of the person, and the guardian of the property. Plus the age at which capital is released.
→ Four names and a holding direction
- 5
How you reduce the chance of a challenge
A recital explaining unequal shares, witnesses unconnected to the beneficiaries, an independent hand in the drafting, a doctor’s note where capacity might be questioned — and telling the family.
→ A will that is hard to attack rather than merely valid
- 6
The things wills forget
Digital assets with real value, foreign property, the old provident fund, the vehicle, the locker contents, and money lent to a relative. The one-sheet asset list catches all of them.
→ A complete estate, and a map for the executor
Every stage here is a decision, not a document. When all six are settled, the will format page turns them into an executed will in an afternoon.
No durations appear on this timeline because none of these stages has one — they take as long as the conversations take, and the conversations are the point.
Four appointments people collapse into one
A will can make four different appointments, and they do four different jobs. Naming the same person for all four is sometimes right and is almost never considered.
Executor
Administers the estate
Collects the assets, pays the debts and expenses, applies for probate where it is needed, and distributes what is left. Months of correspondence with banks, registrars and societies. Probate can be granted only to an executor appointed by the will.
Basis: Indian Succession Act, 1925, s. 222.
Guardian of the person
Who the child lives with
Day-to-day care, school, health, where the child grows up. This is a question about warmth, stability and willingness, and it has nothing to do with financial competence.
Basis: Appointed by the will; the court retains its own jurisdiction over a minor’s welfare.
Guardian of the property
Who controls the child’s money
Manages the inheritance until the child is old enough. This is a question about financial competence and trustworthiness, and it is frequently a different person from the one the child should live with.
Basis: Appointed by the will, and constrained by any holding direction in it.
Nominee
Who the institution may pay
Not a will appointment at all — it is a form filed with a bank, insurer, depository or society. It decides who collects, not who owns, and where it contradicts the will the family ends up holding money it is not free to spend.
Basis: Banking Regulation Act, 1949, s. 45ZA; Companies Act, 2013, s. 72; Insurance Act, 1938, s. 39.
These are four separate questions. Winning one of them does not decide any of the others.
Name an alternate for each of the first three. All three appointments fail for the same reason — the person named predeceases the testator or is unable to act — and one extra line prevents it.
Decision one: what is actually yours to leave
This is the question that comes before every other, and it is the one people skip. A will can only dispose of property the testator is entitled to dispose of. Section 30 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 says exactly that: any Hindu may dispose by will of any property "which is capable of being so disposed of by him or by her", in accordance with the Indian Succession Act, 1925 or any other law applicable to Hindus. The whole question is in that qualifying phrase.
Four categories behave differently, and getting them wrong produces a will that appears to give away things it cannot.
| The asset | What you can leave | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Self-acquired property — bought with your own money, or inherited absolutely | All of it, to anyone. There is no forced heirship rule requiring a share for a child or a spouse under the Hindu Succession Act. | Nothing special. This is the straightforward case and most estates are entirely in it. |
| An interest in ancestral coparcenary property | Your own undivided interest in it, and not the property itself. The Explanation to Section 30 confirms that a coparcener’s interest is deemed capable of being disposed of by will. | Describe it as your undivided share or interest, not as the property. Establish first whether the property really is coparcenary — most property families call "ancestral" is not. |
| Property held jointly with a right of survivorship | Nothing, if the survivorship is real — the interest passes to the survivor by operation of the arrangement, not under your will. | Check how the title is actually held. A property held as tenants-in-common — which is the normal position between co-owners in India — is a different thing, and your share can be willed. |
| An asset with a registered nominee | You can leave it by will, and the will decides ownership. But the institution will still pay the nominee, who then holds for whoever the will names. | Make the will and the nomination point at the same person. Where they differ deliberately, tell both people. |
| A flat in a co-operative housing society | Your interest in the flat and the shares in the society. | Check the society’s bye-laws and register a nominee with the society, so the society has someone to deal with immediately. That nomination is not a disposition of the flat. |
| An interest in a partnership firm | Your interest, subject to the partnership deed — which may restrict who can be admitted as a partner. | Read the deed before drafting. A will directing something the deed forbids produces a claim for value rather than the interest itself. |
| Property of a female Hindu | All of it. Section 14 makes any property possessed by a female Hindu her absolute property, held as full owner and not as a limited owner. | Note the exception in Section 14(2): property acquired under a gift, will, instrument, decree, order or award whose terms prescribe a restricted estate stays restricted. |
Under Muslim personal law a testator can generally dispose of only one-third of the estate by will without the consent of the heirs, and a bequest to an heir generally requires that consent. Nothing on this page about free disposition applies. Take advice from someone who practises in that law rather than adapting a Hindu will.
Decision two: who gets what, and whether the shares are equal
There is no legal requirement to treat children equally, and there are perfectly good reasons not to: one child has already been helped with a house, another has a disability and will need more, one has worked in the family business for twenty years, one lives abroad and will never use the land. Unequal shares are lawful and often right.
They are also the single biggest predictor that a will ends up in court. So the decision is not whether unequal shares are allowed — they are — but how to make them stick.
Three things help, and none is expensive. Say why, in the will itself. A recital that "I have made unequal provision because I transferred the Pune flat to my elder son in 2016, and this will is intended to bring the overall provision into balance" is far harder to attack than silence, because it shows the decision was considered rather than the product of influence. Tell the family while you are alive — the reaction you would rather have in your own drawing room than in a testamentary suit. And where the estate justifies it, consider taking probate, so that the will is proved once, with the attesting witnesses available, rather than years later when they may not be.
The second half of this decision is the one people find harder: dividing assets that cannot be divided.
- A single house among three children is the classic problem. Leaving it to all three in equal shares does not divide it — it creates three co-owners who will need to agree on everything, and a partition suit if they do not.
- Better alternatives: leave the house to one child and balance the others with financial assets; or direct the executor to sell and divide the proceeds; or leave it to one child subject to a charge to pay the others a stated sum.
- Where one child lives in the house and the others do not, saying nothing about it guarantees the argument. Say what is to happen — a right of residence for a period, a purchase at a valuation, or an outright gift with the others compensated.
- A business is the hardest of all. Leaving shares equally to a child who runs it and children who do not produces a company with a working majority shareholder and passive minority ones. Consider leaving control to the one who runs it and value to the others.
- Where an asset may be sold before you die, say what happens to the proceeds. Without that, the gift simply lapses and the asset falls into the residue.
Decision three: who will actually do the work
The executor collects the assets, pays the debts and the funeral and administration expenses, applies for probate where it is needed, and distributes what is left. It takes months of correspondence with banks, registrars, societies and sometimes a court. It is a job, and choosing badly makes everything afterwards harder.
Probate can be granted only to an executor appointed by the will — Section 222 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 says so in terms, and allows the appointment to be express or by necessary implication. So there is a structural reason to name one carefully: a will with no executor able to act cannot be probated at all, and the family has to go the longer way round under Section 232, with a universal or residuary legatee applying for letters of administration with the will annexed.
| Candidate | Works well when | The risk |
|---|---|---|
| The spouse | The estate is simple and the spouse is the main beneficiary anyway. | They may be elderly, grieving, or predecease you. Name an alternate without fail. |
| One adult child | That child is organised, lives nearby, and the others trust them. | Where the shares are unequal, an executor who is also the biggest beneficiary is in an uncomfortable position and an easy target. |
| Two people jointly | You want a check on one another, or one is local and one has the financial sense. | Two executors who disagree can stall an estate completely. If you do this, choose two who work together already. |
| A professional — an advocate or a chartered accountant | The estate is complicated, or the family is not on good terms. | They will charge, and the estate pays. Agree the basis in writing while you are alive. |
| A younger relative outside the beneficiary group | You want somebody neutral, and you want them to outlive you. | They need to know the family and to be willing. Ask first — nobody should learn they are an executor from the will. |
Whoever you choose, name an alternate in the next sentence. An executor who predeceases the testator is one of the commonest reasons an otherwise perfect will takes the long route.
Keep a single sheet — updated once a year, kept with the will — listing every account, policy, folio, deposit and property, with the institution, the number and the nominee against each. It is not part of the will and it has no legal effect. It will save your executor more time than every other decision on this page combined, because the hardest part of administering an estate is finding out what is in it.
Decision four: who looks after the children, and who looks after their money
For a parent of young children this is usually the reason the will is being written at all, and it is routinely left out of home-made wills.
Two separate appointments are involved, and they need not be the same person. There is the guardian of the person — who the child lives with, and who makes decisions about school, health and daily life. And there is the guardian of the property — who controls the money the child inherits until they are old enough to manage it. A warm, capable relative may be the right person for the first and entirely the wrong one for the second, and vice versa.
The practical questions to settle before drafting are these. Who would you want the child to live with, and have you asked them? Who is the alternate if that person cannot act? At what age should the child receive capital outright — eighteen is the legal age of majority, and many people think it is too young for a substantial inheritance? Who decides how much to spend on the child in the meantime, and on what?
A will can direct that a child’s share be held until a stated age with income applied for their maintenance and education in the meantime. That is a more thoughtful arrangement than a lump sum at eighteen and it costs nothing to draft. Where the sums are substantial or the family situation is complicated, this is one of the few points in a home-made will where professional advice genuinely earns its fee.
Decision five: reducing the chance of a challenge
Wills are attacked on a short and predictable list of grounds. Knowing the list tells you exactly what to do about each one.
| The ground | What the challenger says | What prevents it |
|---|---|---|
| Want of due execution | The will was not signed and attested as Section 63 requires — a witness did not sign in the testator’s presence, or one of the signatures is not what it appears to be. | A clear attestation clause reciting the elements, every page signed by the testator and initialled by both witnesses, and witnesses who can be traced and called. |
| Want of testamentary capacity | The testator did not understand the nature of the property, who their relatives were, or who it would be proper to benefit. | A doctor as one of the attesting witnesses, or a contemporaneous medical note. Section 59 and its illustrations set the standard, and it is about understanding, not physical strength. |
| Fraud, coercion or importunity | The will was procured by pressure. Section 61 makes void a will whose making was caused by fraud or coercion, or by such importunity as takes away the testator’s free agency. | Independent drafting — not by the main beneficiary — and witnesses who are not connected to the beneficiaries. The illustrations to Section 61 make clear that persuasion is not coercion; the problem is control. |
| Suspicious circumstances | Signed shortly before death, prepared by the main beneficiary, unknown to the rest of the family, different in effect from everything the testator ever said. | Time, transparency and an independent hand. This is the ground that most often succeeds and the one most easily prevented. |
| A later will or a revocation | This will was superseded. Section 70 sets out how an unprivileged will is revoked. | An express revocation clause in the current will, and physically destroying earlier originals yourself. |
| The property was not the testator’s to leave | It was ancestral coparcenary property, or held jointly, or subject to somebody else’s interest. | Establish the character of every asset before drafting, and describe a coparcenary interest as your undivided share rather than as the whole property. |
Tell the family. Not necessarily every figure, but at least that a will exists, who the executor is, and — where the shares are unequal — that they are unequal and why. Almost every contested probate begins with a citation arriving at a house where nobody had been told anything, and the shock is doing at least as much work as the grievance.
Decision six: digital assets, foreign assets, and the things wills forget
A will drafted from a twenty-year-old precedent will miss most of what a modern estate actually contains.
Digital assets divide into three kinds and only one of them is really property. There are assets of real value — a cryptocurrency holding, a domain name, a monetised channel, an online business. There are accounts with no value but great importance — email, cloud storage, photographs. And there are licences that die with you, such as most media subscriptions, which are not yours to leave at all.
For the first kind, treat it like any other asset: describe it, say where it is held, and name a beneficiary. For the second, give the executor a direction about access and preservation. For all of them, do not write passwords or seed phrases into the will. A will becomes a public document once it is probated, and it may sit in a drawer for twenty years before anyone reads it — neither is a place for a credential.
Foreign assets raise a different problem. A will made in India may or may not be effective over property in another country, and some jurisdictions require their own grant. Where there is meaningful property abroad, the question of whether to make a separate will in that jurisdiction — carefully drafted so the two do not revoke each other — is a real one and needs advice in both places.
Finally, the things people simply forget: a vehicle, a share in a family property nobody thinks of as an asset, an old provident fund from a former employer, a small insurance policy taken out decades ago, the contents of a locker, and money lent to a relative that everyone remembers differently. The one-sheet asset list solves all of these, and it is worth an hour a year.
An ordering of the six decisions against one another, from how these disputes present. It is not a measurement — no dataset of Indian will disputes exists that would support one, and none is claimed here.
When to draft it yourself, and when to pay someone
Most people can write their own will, and the generator on the format page will produce a good one. The cases where professional advice genuinely earns its fee are identifiable in advance, and they are these.
- Any part of the estate is ancestral coparcenary property, or the character of a property is uncertain.
- There is a business, a partnership interest, or a shareholding that carries control.
- There are minor children and the sums are substantial enough that you want the capital held past eighteen.
- A beneficiary has a disability and will need provision managed for them over a long period.
- You intend to exclude a person who would otherwise inherit, and the estate is large enough that they will litigate.
- There is a second marriage, or children from more than one marriage.
- There is meaningful property outside India.
- You are not governed by the Hindu Succession Act — the rules of what you may dispose of by will are different under Muslim personal law, and different again for Christians and Parsis under their own Parts of the Indian Succession Act.
The most common outcome of deciding that a will needs professional attention is that no will gets written at all. If your situation is one of the complicated ones, write a straightforward will this week using the generator, and take advice afterwards. A simple valid will that you replace in six months is worth incomparably more than the excellent will you never got round to.
Worked examples
Example 1: One house, three children: four ways to do it, and what each produces
- Estate
- A house worth about ₹1,20,00,000, and financial assets of about ₹30,00,000
- Family
- Three adult children; the eldest has lived in the house for nine years
- Wish
- To be fair, without forcing anyone out
- 1.Option one — the house to all three equally. This does not divide anything. It creates three co-owners who must agree on any sale, and a partition suit if they cannot. It is the commonest choice and usually the worst.
- 2.Option two — the house to the eldest, the financial assets to the other two. Simple, but the shares are ₹1,20,00,000 against ₹15,00,000 each, which is not what "fair" was meant to mean.
- 3.Option three — the house to the eldest, subject to a charge to pay each of the other two a stated sum within a stated period, with the financial assets divided equally. This is the arrangement that usually works: one owner, two paid out, and a mechanism rather than a hope.
- 4.Option four — direct the executor to sell the house and divide the proceeds equally. Clean and genuinely equal, and it puts the eldest out of a home they have lived in for nine years.
- 5.Whichever is chosen, say why in the will, and tell the three of them now rather than leaving it to the citation.
Option three, in most families. What matters is not which one is picked but that the will picks one — an indivisible asset left undivided is the decision deferred, not the decision made.
Example 2: The child who was helped along the way
- Testator
- A father of two
- Earlier gift
- Paid ₹40,00,000 towards the elder child’s flat in 2016
- Estate now
- About ₹1,00,00,000, all self-acquired
- Wish
- To leave ₹30,00,000 to the elder and ₹70,00,000 to the younger
- 1.The unequal division is entirely lawful. Section 30 of the Hindu Succession Act allows a Hindu to dispose by will of any property capable of being so disposed of, and self-acquired property may be left to anyone.
- 2.The risk is not legal but evidential: an unexplained unequal will is the classic subject of a challenge on suspicious circumstances or undue influence.
- 3.The fix is a recital. "I have provided ₹30,00,000 to my elder son and ₹70,00,000 to my younger son. I record that in 2016 I contributed ₹40,00,000 towards the purchase of my elder son’s flat at [address], and this will is intended to bring the overall provision between them into balance."
- 4.That single paragraph converts an apparently arbitrary decision into a documented one, and shifts the ground under any suggestion that the testator did not know what he was doing.
- 5.Tell both sons. Having the conversation once, in your lifetime, is what actually prevents the litigation.
The same distribution, with an explanation on the face of the will and no surprise afterwards. The recital costs one paragraph and is the most valuable thing in the document.
Example 3: Young children, and the two guardians who should not be the same person
- Testator
- A parent of children aged 6 and 9
- Estate
- A flat, a term insurance policy, and financial assets
- Candidates
- A sister who is warm and close to the children, and a brother who is a chartered accountant
- 1.Two appointments are needed, and the will should make both. The guardian of the person is who the children live with; the guardian of the property controls what they inherit until they are old enough to manage it.
- 2.The sister is the natural choice for the first. The brother is the natural choice for the second. Naming one person for both would force a choice that does not have to be made.
- 3.Name an alternate for each. Guardianship appointments fail for the same reason executor appointments do.
- 4.Direct that each child’s share be held until a stated age — many parents choose 21 or 25 — with the income applied for maintenance and education in the meantime, rather than paid outright at 18.
- 5.Match the insurance nomination to the plan. A term policy nominating a six-year-old, with no appointee named to receive it during minority, creates exactly the problem the will was written to avoid.
Four appointments, one holding direction, and a nomination that matches. This is the case where a home-made will is most likely to be inadequate and where an hour with an advocate is most obviously worth it.
More questions about this page
Do I have to leave equal shares to my children?▼
Can I leave everything to one child and nothing to the others?▼
Who should I name as executor?▼
What happens if I do not name a guardian for my children?▼
Can I leave ancestral property in my will?▼
Should I put my passwords in my will?▼
What if I have property in another country?▼
How often should I update my will?▼
Should I use a lawyer or write it myself?▼
Official sources checked
The statutes, rules and regulator pages the statements on this page were checked against.
- What may be disposed of by will, including the Explanation deeming a coparcener’s interest capable of testamentary disposition, and the absolute property of a female Hindu.
- Capacity and its illustrations, wills obtained by fraud or coercion, execution, revocation, and the rule that probate is granted only to an executor appointed by the will.
You are here
Deciding what the will should say
What to do next
- 1
Turn the decisions into a document
A full sample, every clause explained, and a generator that produces it as Word or PDF. It is an afternoon once the decisions are made.
Will format and the free generator → - 2
Check whether the property you are leaving is really yours to leave
Most property families call ancestral is not, and the difference decides whether you can will the property or only your undivided interest in it.
Ancestral property and coparcenary → - 3
Work out whether this will is one that needs probate
It turns on where the will is made and where the immovable property is. Knowing now changes how carefully you choose witnesses.
When probate is compulsory → - 4
Fix your nominations at the same sitting
The will decides ownership, the nomination decides speed. Where they disagree, the family holds money it cannot spend.
Nominee against legal heir →