Will requirements in Kentucky

Who can make a will in Kentucky

Kentucky asks two things of you before a will counts: you must be at least 18, and you must be of sound mind at the moment you sign. Sound mind is a working standard, not a medical one: you know what you own, who your family is, and what your will actually does with it.

Signing your will in Kentucky

1. 1You sign

   You sign your will, or direct someone else to sign it for you, in your presence and at your direction.

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Unless the entire will is written in your own hand, two credible witnesses sign it in your presence and in the presence of each other. Choose adults who inherit nothing under the will, so no gift can later be second-guessed.

3. 3The affidavit

   Optional but useful: a self-proving affidavit, sworn by you and your witnesses before a notary. It lets a Kentucky court accept your will later without tracking anyone down to testify it is genuine.

Handwritten and electronic wills

Kentucky recognizes a fully handwritten will. Write and sign the entire document yourself, and it needs no witnesses at all; mix in a single typed line, and the ordinary two-witness rule takes over for the whole document. Kentucky has also authorized electronic wills, a will signed and witnessed entirely online, under a 2026 law that requires both witnesses to be Kentucky residents, physically located in the state, watching the signing in person or by video.

Both paths are real and legal here. Myend takes the older, plainer route: you build your Kentucky will online, then print it and sign it on paper with two witnesses, the form every state, Kentucky included, has always accepted. See how Myend’s Last Will works.

Property and your spouse

Kentucky is a common-law property state by default, so what you hold in your own name is yours to leave as you choose, with one long-standing limit. A surviving spouse’s protection here comes from the older dower tradition rather than a single flat fraction of the estate. A spouse who is left out of a will can renounce it and claim a statutory share of the estate instead, so you cannot fully disinherit a spouse with a will alone.

Married couples also have an option most never use. Kentucky is one of only five states, alongside Alaska, Florida, South Dakota, and Tennessee, that let a couple elect into community property treatment for specific assets instead of leaving everything under the common-law default. It takes a deliberate election to set up. It does not happen on its own.

Your executor

Kentucky calls the person who carries out your will the executor. You can name almost any capable adult, with one real limit: if that person lives outside Kentucky, they must be related to you by blood, marriage, or adoption, or be the spouse of a relative. A trusted friend or unrelated caretaker across state lines cannot serve, however much you trust them. New to the role? Start with what an executor actually does.

If someone challenges the will

Kentucky takes no-contest clauses seriously. If your will disinherits anyone who challenges it and loses, Kentucky courts enforce that clause largely as written, a rule built by case law rather than a statute the legislature passed. Kentucky does not carve out a broad, statutory good-faith exception the way many other states do. Write these clauses with care, and know that a family member who suspects something is wrong may think twice before raising it.

If you do not make a will

Without a will, Kentucky’s default succession laws take over and hand your estate to a set line of relatives, whether or not that reflects what you actually wanted for the people in your life. Unmarried partners, stepchildren you raised as your own, and close friends typically have no place in that line, however central they were to you. A valid will is how you put your own decisions ahead of the state’s default order. See what happens if you die without a will.

What is different about Kentucky

The same 2026 law let Kentucky sign a will over video and rewrote what a surviving spouse inherits when there is no will at all.

Two changes took effect in Kentucky on the same day. Since July 15, 2026, Kentucky has allowed a will to be signed and witnessed entirely online, one of just sixteen jurisdictions to authorize that. The same 2026 act also reworked the dower-derived share a surviving spouse takes when someone dies without a will, a rule descended from one of the oldest forms of spousal protection in American probate law. One of the oldest ideas in the law and one of the newest ways to sign a will took effect on the same day, from the same act.

Kentucky layers on a third option most states skip entirely: married couples can elect into community property treatment for specific assets, a choice only Alaska, Florida, South Dakota, and Tennessee also offer, instead of leaving everything under the common-law default. And Kentucky still honors a will written entirely in your own hand, no witnesses required, a rule that predates all of it. Old, new, and optional sit side by side here in a way few other states attempt.

Common questions

Sources and review