What a will actually controls

A will directs the assets that pass through the estate, names an executor, and — where there are minor children — nominates a guardian. That is the whole scope.

It does not control a retirement account with a named beneficiary, a life insurance policy, a payable-on-death bank account, a jointly held home, or anything owned by a funded trust. Those all move on their own instructions, and the will has no authority over them however clearly it is written.

This is a frequent surprise families encounter. A will leaving "everything equally to my three children" does not divide a 401(k) that names one of them as beneficiary — the administrator is required to pay in accordance with the plan's own documents, and the will is not one of them.•

But do not finish there, because "the plan pays the named person" is not reliably true either. On a typical employer plan the surviving spouse is the default beneficiary, and naming anyone else takes that spouse's written consent, witnessed by a plan representative or a notary. Where a married person named a child and no such consent exists, the answer is neither the will nor the named child — it is the spouse. This is worth checking before anybody is told what they are getting. And check which kind of account it is: an ordinary IRA is excluded by regulation from these federal plan rules, so the same household can get one answer for the workplace plan and a different one for the IRA beside it.•••

And the will is cut into from the other side

Everything above is about assets the will never reached. There is a second subtraction, and it operates on the estate the will does govern: a surviving spouse is not obliged to accept what the will gave them. In Florida a spouse may claim an elective share of 30 per cent of the elective estate, and in New York the greater of fifty thousand dollars or one third of the net estate, reduced by what passes to the spouse outright — with testamentary substitutes counted in, so routing assets around the will does not defeat it. Arizona and California reach the same protection by a different road: they are community-property states, so half the community property was never the deceased spouse's to leave and never enters the estate at all.•••••

A spouse married after the will was signed, and a child born or adopted after it, may also take despite what the document says. The rules are not uniform and New York is the outlier in the ungenerous direction: where the testator already had children and left none of them anything, an after-born child can take nothing at all. Sahvelo covers both of these in its guidance on making a will; the reason they belong here is that a family reading a will for the first time should not conclude from its words alone that the question is settled.•••••••

9

Where the will actually is

Start with the drafting attorney, even if nobody is certain there was one. Firms routinely keep the signed original in a fireproof file and give the client a conformed copy — which is why so many families find a copy at home and conclude the original is lost. If you do not know who drafted it, the check book, the bank statements and the address book usually do: look for a payment to a law firm, and for a firm's name on any other document the person signed, such as a deed or a trust.

When you reach the firm, ask four things: do you hold the signed original, when was it last amended, do you hold any codicils, and who is named as executor. A firm will normally confirm the existence of a will to a close relative even before it will release it, and knowing the executor's name changes who has to do everything that follows.

If the attorney has retired, died, or the firm has closed

This is common and it is not a dead end. A closed practice's files are normally transferred to a successor firm or to a custodian appointed under the state's rules for closed practices, and the state bar is the body that knows where they went. Call the bar's member-records or client-protection line with the attorney's name and the county — that is a faster route than searching for the firm, which may no longer exist under any name you recognize. For the other states Sahvelo has not verified the individual bar rules, so treat that route as practical guidance rather than as law. California is the exception, and it is worth knowing about.

In California this is not merely practical guidance. When an attorney dies, resigns, becomes inactive, is disbarred or is suspended, notice of cessation of practice must be given and the courts of the state acquire jurisdiction over the practice by statute. Retirement into inactive status is inside that list, and it is a frequent reason a family cannot find the firm that drafted a will twenty years ago. The court may then make an order assuming jurisdiction over the practice — and the ground reaches beyond unfinished client matters to any case where an interested person would be prejudiced without it. A family who cannot get at a will sitting in a closed practice's files is such a person, and that is the language to use when asking.••

The other places originals turn out to be

  • A home safe or a fireproof box, usually with the deed, the marriage certificate and the insurance policies. Look for the group of documents, not for the will on its own.
  • A filing cabinet or desk drawer, filed under something other than 'will' — 'estate', 'important papers', the attorney's name, or nothing at all.
  • With the person named as executor. People often hand the original to whoever they asked to do the job, which is why finding out who that is comes early.
  • In a safe-deposit box. Common, and not the disaster the usual advice claims — each of the 12 states read here has a route into the box for the limited purpose of getting the will out.
  • Deposited with the court for safekeeping during the person's lifetime, which is a step almost nothing prompts you to check.

New York provides for that last one expressly: the Surrogate's Court of the county where the person lived will receive a will for safekeeping and give the depositor a written receipt. So in New York there is a specific question worth asking the Surrogate's Court of the right county — was a will deposited here — and it costs a phone call. Sahvelo has not established equivalent provisions in the other states and does not assume their absence.•

The blanket advice that a safe-deposit box is a bad place for a will is wrong in several of the states Sahvelo has read. Arizona has the bank open a sole lessee's box after the death and hand out the will; California lets anyone holding a key get in before probate; Florida lets a spouse or the named executor open the box to search. New York is the state where the caution holds. Each route is a different procedure, and Sahvelo covers them in its guidance on safe deposit boxes rather than repeating them here.

Before you move anything

Photograph each document where you found it, before it goes in a pile. If the original never surfaces, the question a court will ask is where the will was last known to be and who had access to it, and the answer is much harder to give three weeks later from memory. Keep a plain written list as you go: what the document was, where it was, who was present. This costs nothing now and is the difference between evidence and recollection later.

Throw nothing away. Not the photocopy, not the unsigned draft, not the envelope, not the torn one. Each of those is worth something specific, sometimes a great deal, and the next section is about what each is worth.

What you found, and what it is worth

The pile on the kitchen table usually contains several documents that look like wills and are not, and one or two that are. Sorting them is the next task, and each kind has a different consequence.

A signed original

This is what a court wants. Check that it is signed at the end and that witnesses have signed too — the number and the manner vary by state, and the branch below sets out what each of Sahvelo's states requires. Look for a separate page headed as an affidavit of the witnesses, often stapled or bound in; where it exists it can spare the family the job of tracking down the witnesses years later.

A photocopy or a scan

Worth keeping, and worth more than a copy sounds. If the original is never found the copy becomes evidence of what the will said, and in Florida a correct copy halves what else you need — one disinterested witness instead of two. In New York a copy can carry the whole content requirement, though the copy itself has to be proved true and complete. A scan or a photograph on a phone is the same kind of evidence as a paper copy; preserve the file and note where it came from.••

An unsigned draft

Not a will, and still useful. It tells you which firm drafted it, roughly when, and what the person intended — which is where to direct the search and, if it comes to proving a lost will, part of the evidence of contents. Do not treat a draft as though it governs anything, and do not act on its terms.

More than one will

Find the dates first; a later will usually revokes an earlier one. Where the later document does not say so expressly, Arizona resolves it by asking whether the later will disposes of everything: if it does, it is presumed to replace rather than supplement the earlier one, and only clear and convincing evidence displaces that presumption. Keep both. A later will that turns out to be invalid can leave the earlier one operative, and destroying it removes the fallback.•

A damaged or marked-up will

Change nothing and photograph it as found. In Arizona a revoking act includes burning, tearing, canceling, obliterating or rendering unreadable — and a tear counts whether or not it touched any of the words. So a will with a tear across a blank margin is evidence about what the person intended, not damage to tidy up before handing it in.•

Not sure which of these is yours?

Sahvelo answers from what it has verified, and asks when it needs one more fact.

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Sahvelo gives information drawn from statutes, agency guidance and official forms. It is not legal advice for your particular situation. Terms & disclaimer.

If there is no will

The estate is distributed under the state's intestacy statute, which sets a fixed order: usually spouse and children first, then parents, then siblings, and outward from there. The order is not a guess about what the person wanted; it is a rule, and it applies regardless of what anyone says they were told.

Dying without a will also changes who is appointed. Instead of the executor named in a document, the court appoints an administrator, usually working down a statutory priority list. In practice this means a bond may be required and the process is slightly more supervised.

An unmarried partner generally inherits nothing under intestacy, however long the relationship. This is the case where the absence of a will does the most damage.

Someone else has it and will not hand it over

This is not a family argument the law leaves alone. Whoever holds a will after the death has a duty to produce it, and in two of Sahvelo's states that duty carries a deadline measured in days rather than a vague obligation to be reasonable. The deadline runs from knowledge of the death, not from being asked, so a person sitting on a will is already out of time in California and Florida long before the family gets around to demanding it.

Ask in writing, and keep the request. It converts a family disagreement into a documented refusal, which is what a court acts on and what a lawyer will ask you for first.

The consequences differ enough to change how hard you press. Florida can put costs, damages and the family's attorney's fees onto a custodian the court finds had no just or reasonable cause to withhold it. Arizona makes a willful failure a liability to anyone harmed by it, and ignoring a court order to deliver is contempt. Those are worth quoting in the letter.

Withholding a will is not how you keep an estate out of probate, and holding it back until the family agrees is not a neutral act. The deadline runs regardless of whether anyone has agreed about anything.

If the will cannot be found

Before concluding there isn't one: call every attorney the person used, ask the bank about a safe-deposit box, check whether the county probate court holds a lifetime deposit, and go through the last two years of mail for correspondence from a law firm.

If a copy exists but the original does not, some states allow a copy to be admitted where the proponent can overcome the presumption that the testator destroyed it. That is a proceeding, and it needs a lawyer. If nothing is found at all, the estate is treated as intestate.

A will nobody can find is not automatically a dead will — but where the original was last in the dead person's own hands, the law starts from the assumption that they destroyed it deliberately. California states that outright, and it takes three conditions: the will was last in the testator's possession, they were competent until death, and neither the will nor a duplicate original turns up. Miss any one and the presumption never arises, which is why it matters enormously whether the will was at home or sitting with a lawyer, a bank or a relative.•

California's presumption is the weaker kind — it affects the burden of producing evidence, not the burden of proof. Evidence that the person still meant the will to stand can dispel it, rather than having to outweigh it.•

Two states say plainly what it takes to probate a will that cannot be produced, and the difference decides what a family should be hunting for. Florida lets any interested person establish the full and precise terms — the gist will not do — proved by two disinterested witnesses, or by one if a correct copy is provided. New York sets three cumulative conditions: the will was not revoked, execution is proved as it would be for a will that still existed, and every provision is proved by two credible witnesses or by a copy proved true and complete.••

Do not throw away the photocopy. In Florida it halves the witness requirement, and in New York it can carry the whole content requirement on its own. And in Florida the witnesses must be disinterested — the children who inherit cannot prove the will themselves, so the neighbor who read it matters more than the family who remembers it.••

If more than one will turns up, Arizona answers which one operates. A later will that makes a complete disposition of the estate is presumed to replace rather than supplement the earlier one, and only clear and convincing evidence rebuts that. Arizona also defines a revoking act broadly enough to matter while you are sorting papers: burning, tearing, canceling, obliterating or rendering unreadable all count, and a tear counts whether or not it touched any of the words.•

So a will found torn across a blank margin is evidence about what the person intended, not damage to tidy up. Photograph it as found and change nothing.•

What to gather while you are still searching, because these are the things the statutes ask for: the photocopy or draft, the name of the lawyer who kept the file, the names of the people who watched the will being signed, anyone who read it and can say what it said, evidence of where the original was kept, and evidence that the person was competent at the end. This is the point at which a probate attorney stops being optional — establishing a lost will is a contested-facts proceeding with a statutory evidence standard in each of the 12 states read here.•••

Bring these to the first meeting, because they are what the statutes actually turn on: the photocopy or draft, the drafting firm's name, the names of the attesting witnesses, anyone outside the family who read the will, where the original was last kept and who could reach it, and anything showing the person was competent at the end. A lost-will application is a contested-facts proceeding, and it is won or lost on that list rather than on argument.

You found it. What happens now

Finding the will is not the same as being allowed to act on it, and the gap between those two things is where most families lose weeks.

  1. Read it for two facts before anything else: who is named executor, and whether there is a trust. If the will leaves everything to a trust, the will is a short document and the trust is the one that matters.
  2. Lodge it where the state requires. In California and Florida that is a deadline with a named recipient, and it applies to whoever holds the will whether or not they intend to be involved.
  3. Do not distribute anything. Not the car, not the jewellery, not the money in the joint account. An executor who hands out property before debts are dealt with can end up personally liable for the shortfall.
  4. Expect the will to control less than you think. Anything with a named beneficiary or a survivor on the title passes outside it, so the will may govern a much smaller pile than the family assumes.

Whether the estate then needs full probate at all is a separate question with a different answer in every state, and often the answer is no — Sahvelo covers the small-estate routes and the probate threshold in their own guidance.

What the holder of the will must do, by state

This is the part that surprises people, because two of these four states put a clock on someone who may not even be involved in the estate. If you are holding a will, the deadline is yours, not the executor's.

Deadline to hand in the original

The rule that catches people who are only holding the document

The answer in 12 states

  • Arizona

    No fixed deadline. The custodian must deliver it with reasonable promptness on the request of an interested person, and a willful failure creates liability for damages.1

  • California

    30 days after learning of the death, to the superior court clerk — plus a copy to the named executor.2

  • Florida

    10 days after receiving information that the testator has died, deposited with the clerk of the court.3

  • Illinois

    Immediately upon the death, and the duty is on whoever is holding the will rather than on the executor — the lawyer who drafted it, the bank that stored it, the child who found it in a drawer. It goes to the clerk of the circuit court of the proper county. Filing the will is not the same act as opening an estate, so a family who has decided the estate is small enough for the affidavit route still owes it.•

  • Michigan

    With reasonable promptness after the death — a standard rather than a number, which is more forgiving than Illinois's immediately and less certain than Florida's ten days. The duty is on possession rather than office, so the lawyer who drafted it, the bank that stored it and the child who found it owe it equally, and sending it to the court by registered mail is expressly enough.•

  • New Jersey

    No deadline identified. Sahvelo has not found a New Jersey provision putting a clock on the custodian of an original will — four searches of the full statute text returned nothing of that shape, which is a statement about the search rather than about New Jersey law. What New Jersey has instead is a court: the Superior Court has jurisdiction to compel discovery as to the existence or whereabouts of a paper purporting to be a will that has not been offered for probate, and to require it to be lodged with the surrogate of the county. The relief covers finding out whether a will exists, not only prising one out of a named person.12

  • New York

    No fixed deadline. Probate is commenced by petition to the Surrogate's Court; Sahvelo found no deposit deadline of the Florida or California kind.4

  • North Carolina

    No deadline on the named executor — they may apply to the clerk of superior court at any time after the death. The practical deadline is sixty days, and it is enforced by other people rather than by the state: after sixty days any devisee named in the will, or anyone else interested in the estate, may apply over the executor's head on ten days' notice to them, and the clerk may shorten the sixty days for good cause.•

  • Ohio

    Ohio does not set a general filing deadline in the sections Sahvelo has read, and none is asserted. What it sets instead is a one-year clock aimed at the person most likely to be sitting on the will: a beneficiary named in it who knows it exists, has the power to control it, and without reasonable cause conceals it, withholds it, or simply neglects or refuses to have it offered for probate within a year of the death. There is also a way to remove the problem in advance — a will may be deposited with the probate judge in the testator's county, before or after the death, for a small fee, sealed and endorsed with the testator's name.•

  • Pennsylvania

    None. A will may be offered for probate at any time, and it goes to the Register of Wills of the county where the person had their last family or principal residence — that county only, if they were domiciled in Pennsylvania. If someone else is holding the will and will not hand it over, any party in interest can ask the register to issue a citation requiring them to show cause why it should not be deposited, and absent good cause the register shall order it deposited.•

  • Texas

    On receiving notice of the death. Texas sets no number of days: the person who has custody of the will shall deliver it to the clerk of the court with jurisdiction of the estate, and the duty starts when they learn of the death rather than when someone asks.•

  • Washington

    Thirty days from learning of the death, for whoever is holding the will — and the original may go either to the court or to the person the will names as executor. An executor holding it then has forty days from learning of the death to get it to the court. Both clocks run from knowledge, not from the death.•

What happens if you are late

The answer in 12 states

  • Arizona

    Liability to anyone harmed by the failure, and contempt if a court order to deliver is ignored.1

  • California

    The statute directs delivery and sets a deadline: the custodian of a will must deliver it to the clerk of the superior court within thirty days of learning of the death. Sahvelo has not verified the penalty for failing to and does not state one.2

  • Florida

    Costs, damages and reasonable attorney's fees against the custodian, where the court finds no just or reasonable cause for the failure.3

  • Illinois

    The court can compel production on its own motion or on anyone's petition, by attachment. Beyond that it stops being a civil matter: willfully altering or destroying a will without the testator's direction, or hiding one for thirty days after learning of the death, is sentenced as theft of property classified as a Class 3 felony. The thirty days runs from knowledge of the death, not from the death.•

  • Michigan

    Money, where the neighboring states use criminal law. A custodian who neglects the duty without reasonable cause is liable for the damages sustained by the neglect — so the measure is what the delay actually cost and the person recovering is whoever bore it. Reasonable cause is a defense, which matters for somebody who did not know of the death. Willful refusal after a court order compelling delivery is contempt of court, but somebody has to bring that proceeding first. Illinois makes concealment a Class 3 felony, Ohio takes the concealing beneficiary's inheritance, North Carolina jails the custodian without bail; Michigan is the only one of the four that puts the family in a position to be compensated.•

  • New Jersey

    No statutory penalty identified, and the practical answer is the court order rather than a fine. A custodian who ignores an order of the Superior Court is in the ordinary position of anybody who ignores one. Note where the will goes if the order is made: to the surrogate of the county for probate, not to the person who asked for it.12

  • New York

    Not applicable, there being no deposit deadline.4

  • North Carolina

    The clerk of superior court compels production by summons — and the section is blunt about what follows. A person duly summoned who refuses in contempt to produce the will, or who has parted with it and refuses to say on oath where it is or what they did with it, is committed to the county jail, without bail, until the will is produced or accounted for and submission made for the contempt. Ohio takes a concealing beneficiary's inheritance and Illinois makes it a Class 3 felony; North Carolina puts the custodian in a cell until the document appears.•

  • Ohio

    Not a fine and not a prosecution — the inheritance. A beneficiary caught by that one-year rule takes nothing, and the property passes as though they had predeceased the testator. Two details make it sharper than it first looks. Neglect counts as much as concealment, so the relative who kept meaning to deal with it is inside the section. And the forfeiture is expressed as reaching property passing testate or intestate alike, so sitting on a will in order to fall back on the intestacy rules is precisely what it forecloses.•

  • Pennsylvania

    Not a penalty, but a loss that lands on the beneficiary rather than on whoever delayed. After one year, a will offered for probate is void against anyone who bought the testator's real estate in good faith, or took a lien on it, and recorded before the will was offered. Nobody is fined and nothing is forfeited in general — the will still works for everything else. What can be gone is that specific property, against that specific buyer.•

  • Texas

    Unusually direct. On a sworn written complaint that someone has custody of the will or estate papers, the judge shall have them cited by personal service to show cause. If they neither deliver nor show good cause, the judge may have them arrested and confined until they do — and they are liable to anyone aggrieved for all damages caused by the refusal.•

  • Washington

    Personal liability rather than a court sanction. Anyone who willfully breaks the rule is liable to any party aggrieved for the damages the violation caused — so holding a will back until the family agrees on something is a risk taken with your own money.•

What made the will valid in the first place

The answer in 12 states

Sahvelo has read all twelve of these states at their own sources. Another state's rule may differ, and we would rather say that than generalize. If the person died elsewhere, that state's rule may impose its own deadline, and the absence of one here is not evidence of an absence there.

Questions people ask about this

  • We found a handwritten will. Is it valid?

    It depends entirely on the state. Arizona recognizes holographic wills by statute. Florida and New York are far more restrictive about unwitnessed handwritten documents. This is worth an hour with an attorney rather than an assumption in either direction.

  • When is the reading of the will?

    There isn't one. The formal reading is a convention of film. In practice the will is filed, beneficiaries are notified in writing, and anyone entitled to a copy gets one.

  • The named executor does not want to do it.

    Nobody is obliged to serve. They decline formally, and the court moves to the alternate named in the will, or appoints someone under the statutory priority order if there is no alternate.

  • The will leaves someone out. Can it be challenged?

    Sometimes, on narrow grounds: lack of capacity, undue influence, fraud, or improper execution. "It is unfair" is not a ground. A surviving spouse also has statutory rights in most states that a will cannot fully defeat, and that is a different question from a contest.

  • Can we just hold onto it until the family agrees?

    In Florida and California, no — the deadline runs against whoever is holding it, and in Florida a delay without reasonable cause can cost the custodian fees and damages. Depositing the will is not the same as opening probate; it is handing the document to the court.

  • We only have a photocopy. Is that any use?

    Yes, and do not throw it away. If the original never turns up the copy is evidence of what the will said. In Florida a correct copy halves the corroboration you need — one disinterested witness rather than two. In New York a copy can satisfy the content requirement outright, provided the copy itself is proved true and complete, though you must still show the will was not revoked and prove execution as if the original existed. What a copy cannot do on its own is defeat the presumption, in a state that applies one, that a person who kept their will and left no original destroyed it.•••

  • Who can act as a witness to prove a lost will?

    In Florida the statute requires disinterested witnesses, which excludes the people who inherit — so the neighbor, the bookkeeper or the friend who actually read the will matters more than the children who remember it. New York asks for credible witnesses and separately requires that execution be proved in the manner required for a will that still exists, which points at the people who watched it being signed. Finding those people early is worth more than almost anything else you can do, because they become harder to trace with every year.••

  • Mom kept her will at home and we cannot find it. Does that mean she tore it up?

    In California the law starts from that assumption, but only if three things are true: the will was last in her possession, she was competent until she died, and neither the will nor a duplicate original can be found. Miss any one and the presumption never arises — so it matters enormously whether the will was at home or with her lawyer, and whether she had lost capacity before the end. Even where it does arise it is the weaker kind of presumption, affecting who has to come forward with evidence rather than who has to prove the case, so evidence that she still meant the will to stand can dispel it.•

  • What if no version is ever found?

    The estate is administered as if there had been no will, and the state's intestacy rules decide who inherits — which is frequently not what the family expects, particularly where there is a second marriage, a stepchild, or a partner the person never married. That outcome is not automatic the moment the search fails: Florida, New York and California each provide a route to probate a will nobody can produce, and it is worth establishing whether the evidence could support one before accepting intestacy.••

  • How do we find out whether anything has already been filed?

    Ask the probate court — in New York the Surrogate's Court — for the county where the person lived, and search by their name. Two different things can turn up: a case someone has already opened, which tells you who is acting and what stage it has reached, and, in New York, a will deposited with the court for safekeeping during their lifetime. New York's Surrogate's Court receives wills for deposit and gives the depositor a written receipt, so that receipt may be among the papers even if the will is not.•

Related from the Sahvelo Journal: What Your Will Doesn’t Decide

Where this sits in the process

This makes possible

Finishing this unblocks these.

Related

Sources

Every state-specific rule here is quoted from the statute that sets it.

  1. A.R.S. §14-2516 (Custodian of will; duties; liability)

    Arizona: the custodian's duty and the liability for ignoring it.

    azleg.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  2. California Probate Code §8200 (Delivery of will to court clerk)

    California: the 30-day delivery duty and who else gets a copy.

    leginfo.legislature.ca.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  3. Fla. Stat. §732.901 (Production of wills)

    Florida: the 10-day deposit rule and the cost of delay.

    flsenate.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  4. N.Y. SCPA §1401 (Petition for probate)

    New York: how probate is commenced, and the absence of a deposit deadline.

    nysenate.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  5. A.R.S. §14-2502 (Execution of paper wills; witnessed wills; holographic wills)

    Arizona: execution requirements and holographic wills.

    azleg.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  6. California Probate Code §6110 (Execution of will)

    California: execution requirements and the clear-and-convincing exception.

    leginfo.legislature.ca.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  7. Fla. Stat. §732.502 (Execution of wills)

    Florida: witnesses must sign in each other's presence.

    flsenate.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  8. N.Y. EPTL §3-2.1 (Execution and attestation of wills)

    New York: the thirty-day window between witness signatures.

    nysenate.gov Checked 2026-08-12

  9. 29 U.S.C. §1104(a)(1)(D) (Fiduciary duties — plan documents rule)

    Why a beneficiary designation overrides the will.

    law.cornell.edu Checked 2026-08-12

  10. N.J.S.A. 3B:3-2 (Execution; witnessed wills; writings intended as wills)

    New Jersey's execution rules, and the witnessing that does not require the testator's presence.

    lis.njleg.state.nj.us Checked 2026-08-20

  11. N.J.S.A. 3B:3-3 (Writings intended as wills)

    New Jersey's harmless-error rule, which reaches a revocation, an alteration and a revival.

    lis.njleg.state.nj.us Checked 2026-08-20

  12. N.J.S.A. 3B:3-29 (Order to compel production of purported will)

    New Jersey's remedy for a will nobody will produce.

    lis.njleg.state.nj.us Checked 2026-08-20

Sources last reviewed 2026-08-12. Where a source is marked pending re-verification, the page says so wherever the claim appears.

The deadlines and execution requirements here are quoted from each state's statute, and so is the lost-will rule: California's presumption of revocation, Florida's two-witnesses-or-one-with-a-copy standard, New York's three cumulative conditions, and Arizona's rule for which of two wills operates. What a will controls is general. New Jersey is unanswered because its statutes are not retrievable at source. Arizona has no lost-will proof statute that Sahvelo has found — its revocation provision is quoted instead, and the proof route is likely case law and is not stated here. Where a will is handwritten or contested, that remains a question for an attorney rather than a page.