Will requirements in Michigan

Who can make a will in Michigan

Michigan asks two things of you: that you are at least 18, and that you have sufficient mental capacity when you sign, sometimes called sound mind. It is a practical standard, not a medical one. It means you understand what you own, who your family is, and what your will actually does with it.

Signing your will in Michigan

1. 1You sign

   You sign the will, or direct someone else to sign it for you in your conscious presence.

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Two witnesses who saw you sign, or heard you acknowledge the signature as your own, sign their own names within a reasonable time afterward. Choose adults who inherit nothing under the will, so no gift can later be questioned.

3. 3The affidavit

   Optional but common: a self-proving affidavit. You and your witnesses swear to it before a notary, and the court can later accept the will without calling anyone to testify.

Handwritten and electronic wills

Michigan recognizes a will that skips the two-witness ceremony above: if it is dated, and your signature and its material terms are entirely in your own handwriting, it stands on its own, witnessed or not. It is a real option, and a private one, since nobody checks your wording along the way. Michigan has not authorized electronic wills; the document a court will accept is still paper, signed in ink. That is exactly how Myend’s Last Will works everywhere: you build the will online, then print and sign it with your witnesses, on paper, the form every state accepts.

Property and your spouse

Michigan is a common-law property state: what you or your spouse earn in your own name stays individually owned, not automatically split the way it would be in a community property state. The law still keeps a will from cutting a spouse out entirely. If you are married, your spouse can choose to claim half of what they would have inherited under Michigan’s own intestacy statute, had you died without a will at all (MCL 700.2202(2)(b), referencing MCL 700.2102). Your spouse has to make this election; it does not happen on its own, but the option stands no matter what your will says.

Your executor

Michigan calls the person who carries out your will the executor. You can name almost any capable adult, in or out of state; Michigan does not narrow the field the way some neighboring states do. Most people still name someone reachable nearby as primary, simply for convenience during probate, with an out-of-state person as backup. New to the role? Start with what an executor actually does.

If someone challenges the will

Michigan enforces no-contest clauses, the provision that disinherits anyone who challenges the will and loses. But the clause has a real limit: it does not reach a challenge brought with probable cause, meaning a reasonable, properly informed person would have thought the challenge had a substantial chance of succeeding (MCL 700.2518). In other words, Michigan lets you discourage a frivolous fight without punishing an honest question.

If you do not make a will

Without a will, Michigan’s intestacy statute steps in and distributes your estate through a fixed sequence of relatives, regardless of what you actually wanted for the people in your life. Unmarried partners, stepchildren you never formally adopted, and close friends typically receive nothing under that sequence, however central they were to you. A valid will is how you replace the state’s default order with your own. See what happens if you die without a will.

What is different about Michigan

Michigan does not promise a spouse a fixed slice of the estate. It promises half of whatever the law would have given them anyway.

Michigan is one of 27 states that still honors a will written and signed entirely in your own hand, no witnesses required, so long as it is dated and the signature and substance are genuinely yours. Cross the border into Ohio, right next door, and that same document is worthless there: Ohio requires two witnesses for every will, typed or handwritten, no exceptions.

The deeper difference is in the arithmetic behind a spouse’s protection. Most fixed-share states, Ohio among them, hand a surviving spouse a flat fraction of the probate estate itself, a third or a half of the pie in front of the court. Michigan calculates its half differently: half of what your spouse would have received under Michigan’s own intestacy statute, the rules that would apply if you had left no will at all (MCL 700.2202(2)(b), .2102). That intestate share is not one fixed number; it shifts with who else survives you, so the floor under your spouse moves with your family circumstances rather than sitting still. Two states, both using the word “half,” describing two different calculations.

Common questions

Sources and review