Will requirements in Alabama

Who can make a will in Alabama

Alabama sets two conditions for making a will: you need to be at least 18, and you need to be of sound mind when you sign. Sound mind is not a medical diagnosis. It means you understand what you own, you know who your close family is, and you recognize that the document in front of you is meant to be your will.

Signing your will in Alabama

1. 1You sign

   You sign the will yourself, or direct someone else to sign it for you while you are present and aware of what is happening.

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Two witnesses watch you sign, or hear you acknowledge that the signature is yours, then add their own signatures. Pick adults who inherit nothing under the will, so no gift can later be questioned.

3. 3The affidavit

   Optional but common: a self-proving affidavit, signed separately by you and your witnesses before a notary. With it in place, the court can accept the will later without calling anyone in to testify.

Handwritten and electronic wills

Alabama does not recognize a will that exists only in your own handwriting, however clearly it lays out your wishes. Every will needs two witnesses here, typed or handwritten alike. The one real exception is a will that was already valid under the law of the place where it was made, or where you were domiciled at the time; Alabama will still honor that will even if it relied on handwriting alone. Alabama also has not authorized electronic wills. What actually reaches probate is paper, signed in ink, in front of two witnesses. 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

Alabama is a common-law property state: whatever you earn or acquire in your own name is yours to leave, not automatically split with a spouse the way it would be in a community-property state. Alabama still keeps a will from cutting a spouse out completely. A surviving spouse can set aside what the will provides and instead claim about a third of your net probate estate, the property left once debts and the costs of administration are paid, under Ala. Code § 43-8-70. Your spouse has to make that choice; it does not happen automatically, but the option stands regardless of what your will says.

Your executor

Alabama calls the person who carries out your will the executor. You can name almost any capable adult, whether they live in Alabama or somewhere else entirely; Alabama does not require an out-of-state executor to appoint a local agent or post a bond the way some neighboring states do. Many people still choose someone nearby as primary, mainly for convenience during probate, and name an out-of-state person as backup. New to the role? Start with what an executor actually does.

If someone challenges the will

Alabama enforces no-contest clauses, the provision that disinherits anyone who challenges the will and loses. The exception is a challenge brought with probable cause, meaning a reasonable person looking at the same facts would have thought it had a genuine chance of succeeding. The clause discourages a frivolous fight without punishing someone who had real grounds to ask questions.

If you do not make a will

Without a will, Alabama’s intestacy statute decides who inherits, working through a fixed order of relatives rather than asking what you actually wanted. Unmarried partners and close friends typically receive nothing under that order, however central they were to your life. A valid will is how you replace the state’s default sequence with your own decisions. See what happens if you die without a will.

What is different about Alabama

Alabama will not take your handwriting as proof of a will, but it will not let your will erase a spouse’s share either.

Start with the plain fact behind Alabama’s best-known rule: a document that exists only in your own hand, however sincere, is not a will here. Every will needs two witnesses, typed or handwritten alike, with one narrow exception for a will already valid under the law of the place where it was made or where you were domiciled. That puts Alabama in more cautious company than the states around it. Mississippi accepts a fully handwritten will on its own, and so does Tennessee to the north; Alabama and its eastern neighbor Georgia both hold the line at two witnesses.

The more consequential rule sits with a spouse. Under Ala. Code § 43-8-70, a surviving spouse who is left out, or left too little, can set the will’s terms aside and instead claim about a third of the net probate estate, the property left once debts and the costs of administration are settled. That fraction and that base are common ground; several other states protect a spouse with roughly the same share of the same kind of estate. What belongs to Alabama specifically is its own statute behind the number, and the fact that it applies directly to the net probate estate, not to a share computed some other way. A will can decide almost everything else about an Alabama estate. On its own, it cannot decide that a spouse gets nothing.

Common questions

Sources and review