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Will

A will is a document that gives instructions for managing a testator’s estate. To be valid, a will must be in writing, signed and attested.

Definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary

A document in which the will maker specifies who is to receive his or her property at death and names an executor. You can also use your will to name a guardian for your young children. To be valid, awill must be signed by the person who made it (called the testator), dated, and witnessed by two people. In some states the witnesses must be disinterested. A will totally in the handwriting of the testator, signed and dated (a "holographic will") but without witnesses, is valid in about half of the states.

Definition provided by Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary.

August 19, 2010, 5:26 pm

 

Mrs. Goddard had a number of wills drawn up throughout her life.  Whenever a change happened relating to her property ownings or relationships with people, Mrs. Goddard created a new will directing how her property should be distributed after her death. 

Each will completely replaced and nullified the previous will in existence.  In the last valid will drawn up before her death, Mrs. Goddard directed that her property be distributed as follows: her house to her daughter, her personal property to her son, and twenty lucrative land holdings throughout the country to a close friend who took care of her in the last years of her life. 

Although Mrs. Goddard's son and daughter would have loved to own the twenty pieces of real estate, they both understood why their mother chose to draw up her last will as she did.

"Rights of succession to the property of a deceased, whether by will or by intestacy, are of statutory creation, and the dead hand rules succession only by sufferance [i.e., toleration or consent of the state].  Nothing in the Federal Constitution forbids the legislature of a state to limit, condition, or even abolish the power of testamentary disposition over property within its jurisdiction."

Irving Trust Co. v. Day, 314 U.S. 556, 562 (1942).