A Will does not expire, and it does not become invalid because it is old. What happens is quieter: it stops matching your life while still looking like a plan.
These are the events worth acting on, and the list is short because most of them are once-in-a-decade events.
Marriage can invalidate parts of an old Will or entitle a new spouse to a share. A divorce does not necessarily remove an ex-spouse as fast as people assume. Both are reasons to re-sign promptly.
The most common reason to update, and the one with the most at stake: the guardian nomination and the trust are built around the children you had when you signed.
A beneficiary, an executor, a trustee or a guardian. If no alternate is named, the choice falls back to a court.
Not strictly a legal event, but the most frequent reason people re-sign. It costs a printer and two witnesses.
A Will valid where you signed it is generally valid where you move, but the signing requirements differ — how many witnesses, whether a notary or a self-proving affidavit is needed, how community property is treated. Signing again after a move is cheap insurance.
A house, a business, a large inheritance, or the sale of something the Will named specifically. A specific gift of property you no longer own simply fails.
There is no way to add a beneficiary by telling someone. The Will has to say it.
Estate tax thresholds and intestacy rules are amended. A Will does not become invalid because a threshold moved, but a plan built around one can quietly stop doing what it was for.
A practical habit rather than a rule: read it through every few years, and always after any event above. The exercise is not the document, it is noticing that a name or a wish no longer matches.
There are two ways: a codicil, which is a separate document that amends the existing Will, or a new Will that revokes the old one. A codicil has the same signing and witnessing requirements as the Will itself, which is why re-signing a whole Will is usually simpler — and why we generate a complete new document rather than a patch.
Whichever route you take: sign it, have it witnessed the way your state requires, and destroy the old copies. Crossing out a line and initialling it is not an amendment, and a Will with handwritten changes on it is an invitation to a dispute.
Indefinitely, in the sense that it does not lapse. The risk is not expiry, it is drift: names that no longer mean what they did, an executor who has died, a guardian who has moved away, or a specific gift of something you sold.
If nothing has changed, and you re-read it and it is still right, leave it alone. Changing a Will for the sake of it only creates a newer document for someone to argue about.
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