Will requirements in Vermont

Who can make a will in Vermont

Vermont asks two things of anyone who wants to make a will: that you are at least 18 years old, and that you are of sound mind when you sign. Sound mind here is a practical bar, not a medical one. It means you generally know what you own, you know who your close family is, and you understand that the document in front of you is meant to decide where your property goes after you die. Vermont applies that test at the moment you sign, not to how clearly you spoke about your wishes before or after.

Signing your will in Vermont

1. 1You sign

   You sign the will yourself, or you direct someone else to sign it for you while you watch.

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Two witnesses sign in your presence. Choose adults who inherit nothing under the will, so no gift you leave ever depends on a witness’s own word.

3. 3The affidavit

   A self-proving affidavit is a separate document, not something built into the will itself. You and your two witnesses sign it in front of a notary, and once it is attached, the probate court can accept your will later without asking either witness to appear and testify. Vermont does not require it, and a notary plays no other part in making your will valid.

Handwritten and electronic wills

Vermont does not recognize a holographic will: a page written and signed only in your own hand, with no witnesses, carries no legal weight here, however clearly it lays out your wishes. Every Vermont will needs the same two witnesses, whether it is typed, handwritten, or something in between. Vermont has also not authorized electronic wills, so a document that only ever existed as a file on a screen is not something a Vermont probate court will treat as your will. That is exactly how Myend’s Last Will works here: you build the will online, then print it and sign it with two witnesses, on paper, the form Vermont has always accepted.

Property and your spouse

Vermont is a common law property state. What you hold in your own name is yours to leave however you choose, right up until a surviving spouse decides to claim their statutory share instead.

That share is set by 14 V.S.A. § 319(a): a surviving spouse can claim a fixed one half of your net probate estate, no matter what your will says. There is no marriage-length schedule to work through, and no augmented-estate calculation reaching into trusts or lifetime gifts the way some other states use. Vermont measures the share against the plainer net probate estate, the property that actually passes under your will. One half is also a genuinely high ceiling. Most states that protect a spouse with a single flat fraction, rather than a schedule tied to years married, stop at one third. Vermont’s is half again as large, and it applies from the day you marry, with no discount for a short marriage.

A Vermont will can still shape almost everything else about your estate: who gets what, who is left out, who runs it. What it cannot do, on its own, is write a spouse’s claim down below that half-share floor.

Your executor

Vermont calls this role the executor. Under 14 V.S.A. § 904, the probate court appoints someone who does not live in Vermont only at its own discretion, so naming an out-of-state executor is not the same sure bet that naming a Vermont resident is. If the court does go ahead with a nonresident, that person has to designate, in writing, a Vermont resident willing to accept legal papers on their behalf, and file that designation with the court before serving. Many Vermonters solve this by naming an in-state executor first and keeping an out-of-state family member as the backup choice. New to the role? Start with what an executor actually does.

If someone challenges the will

Most states have settled this question one way or another, by statute or by a court ruling. Vermont has done neither. No provision of Title 14 addresses a no-contest, or “in terrorem,” clause, and no reported Vermont court decision has ruled on one either. If your will includes a clause meant to cut off anyone who challenges it, nobody, not a Vermont court with a case on the books and not a Vermont attorney reading the statute, can tell you in advance whether that clause would be enforced, softened for a good-faith challenge, or ignored altogether. Vermont is genuinely silent here, not merely vague. Until a Vermont court takes up the question directly, a no-contest clause in a Vermont will is a request you are making of the court, not a guaranteed penalty.

If you do not make a will

Skip the will, and Vermont’s own intestacy statutes decide who inherits, working through a fixed order of relatives rather than asking what you actually wanted. A stepchild you raised, a partner you never married, or a friend who was closer than any cousin has no place in that order unless a will puts them there. Writing a Vermont will, even a short one, replaces that fixed order with the people you actually choose. See what happens if you die without a will.

What is different about Vermont

Vermont sets one of the highest flat shares a spouse can claim, and has no answer at all for what happens when someone tries to punish a challenge to the will.

Vermont is one of 24 states that will not probate a will written and signed only in your own hand. That puts it in the company of most of its New England neighbors, and it means the paper trail matters here in a way it does not in a state that lets handwriting alone stand in for witnesses: two people watching you sign is not a formality Vermont lets you skip.

The deeper story is what a Vermont will still cannot do. 14 V.S.A. § 319(a) lets a surviving spouse claim a fixed one half of your net probate estate, whatever your will says, measured against the estate that actually passes under your will rather than a broader calculation reaching into trusts and lifetime gifts. Most states that protect a spouse with a single flat fraction rather than a marriage-length schedule stop at one third. Vermont’s ceiling is half again as large, and unlike a sliding scale, it does not care whether the marriage lasted two years or forty.

Then there is the gap. No-contest clauses are common enough that most states have settled, by statute or by a court ruling, how firmly they will be enforced. Vermont has done neither. Nothing in Title 14 addresses the question, and no reported Vermont decision has taken it up. A clause that would carry real weight in a neighboring state is, in Vermont, an open question nobody has yet answered.

Put together, Vermont asks little of the will itself, a sound mind and two witnesses, and considerably more of anyone trying to write a spouse, or a challenger, out of the picture entirely.

Common questions

Sources and review