Will requirements in Tennessee

Who can make a will in Tennessee

In Tennessee, making a valid will comes down to two things: you must be 18 or older, and you must be of sound mind at the moment you sign. The courts define sound mind in practical terms, not medical ones: you understand what you own, who your family is, and what your will actually does with what you leave behind.

Signing your will in Tennessee

1. 1You sign

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

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Two witnesses, having watched you sign or heard you acknowledge the signature as your own, add their own signatures in your presence and in front of each other.

3. 3The affidavit

   Optional but common: the self-proving affidavit. You and your witnesses swear to it before a notary or another officer authorized to take oaths, and the court can then accept the will without calling either witness back to testify.

Handwritten and electronic wills

Tennessee recognizes holographic wills with an unusual split in the rules: no witnesses are needed while you write and sign one, so long as the signature and every material part of it are genuinely in your own hand. The witnesses show up later instead, at probate, where at least two people who know your handwriting have to swear it is really yours before the will can be accepted. Tennessee has not authorized electronic wills; the document a court will accept is 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

Tennessee is a common-law property state by default, so what you hold in your own name is otherwise yours to leave as you choose. The one guaranteed floor underneath that freedom is the elective share: if you are married, your spouse can claim a portion of your net estate that grows with how long you were married, ten percent under three years, twenty percent from three to six years, thirty percent from six to nine years, and forty percent, the ceiling, once you pass nine years together (Tenn. Code § 31-4-101(a)). A will alone cannot leave a spouse less than that share, though you remain free to leave more.

Married couples also have an option most states never offer at all: opting into a Tennessee Community Property Trust. Transfer assets into one, with a qualified Tennessee trustee overseeing it, and that property is then treated as community property, owned half and half, the way it automatically would be in Arizona or Texas. Nothing about it happens on its own. A couple who never sets up the trust simply stays under Tennessee’s ordinary common-law rule, and property they never move into the trust stays outside it.

Your executor

Tennessee calls the person who carries out your will the executor. You can name almost any capable adult, in Tennessee or somewhere else entirely. The one wrinkle for an out-of-state executor: the probate court may, at its own discretion, ask them to post a bond before letters are issued (Tenn. Code § 35-50-107). It is not automatic, and most wills that plan for an out-of-state executor simply waive the requirement in the will’s own language. New to the role? Start with what an executor actually does.

If someone challenges the will

Tennessee will enforce a no-contest clause, the provision that cuts off anyone who challenges the will and loses, but not against every challenge. Under Winningham v. Winningham, the Tennessee Supreme Court’s leading case on the question, a challenge brought in good faith and with probable cause survives the clause even if it ultimately fails in court. The rule comes from case law, not a statute, so it is judges, not a legislature, who keep drawing the line between a frivolous fight and an honest question.

If you do not make a will

Skip the will, and Tennessee’s own intestacy statute steps in for you, sorting your estate through a table of relatives lawmakers wrote, not one you chose yourself. It has no entry for the partner you shared a home with for twenty years without marrying, the stepchild you raised as your own, or the friend who mattered more than any cousin on that table. It recognizes marriage and blood, nothing else. Writing a will, even a short one, is how you put your own names in that spot instead. See what happens if you die without a will.

What is different about Tennessee

Tennessee lets a married couple opt into community property without ever leaving a common-law state, and its elective share moves in three-year steps rather than a smooth climb.

Only five states let a married couple opt into community property without living in one of the nine states where it is the default: Alaska, Florida, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Elsewhere in the common-law world, opting in is not on the table at all, which makes the choice itself the distinctive fact, not just the trust mechanics behind it. A Tennessee couple who never sets one up simply stays under the ordinary common-law rule described above; a couple who does gets a version of a benefit otherwise reserved for people who live in Arizona, California, or Texas.

The elective share tells a similar story about how Tennessee resists a smooth formula. Where some states scale a surviving spouse’s protection up gradually with every year of marriage, Tennessee moves in four fixed steps against the net estate, jumping at three years, six years, and nine years, and stopping there. Reach the ceiling of forty percent in year nine, and thirty more years of marriage will not move the number again (Tenn. Code § 31-4-101(a)).

Common questions

Sources and review