How to Change a Will

Once a will has been properly signed and witnessed, it becomes a formal legal document, and the law is strict about what counts as a valid alteration. Under section 21 of the Wills Act 1837, any alteration made to a will after it has been executed is presumed not to be valid unless it has itself been separately signed and witnessed in the margin next to the change, or unless it can be shown the alteration was made before execution.

In practice this means that crossing out a beneficiary, writing in a new gift, or amending a figure by hand on the original document almost never works as intended. Courts and probate registries look at the document as executed, and unauthenticated changes are usually disregarded, sometimes leaving the original, unwanted wording still in force.

For most changes, whether large or small, making a new will is the cleanest and most reliable approach. A properly drafted new will should include a clause expressly revoking all previous wills, which removes any doubt about which document governs your estate. It must then be signed and witnessed following the same formalities as any other will.

This is generally recommended over amending an old will piecemeal, because it avoids having multiple documents in circulation, reduces the risk of confusion for executors, and gives you a single, current statement of your wishes.

A codicil is a short, separate document that makes specific amendments to an existing will, such as changing an executor or adjusting a particular gift, while leaving the rest of the will in place. It must be signed and witnessed with exactly the same formality as a will itself, and it should refer clearly to the will it is amending.

Codicils were more common historically, but with modern will writing services making it straightforward and inexpensive to produce a fresh will, many practitioners now suggest a new will is usually the tidier option, since it avoids the risk of a codicil going missing or being read out of context.

Once a new will has been correctly signed and witnessed, the previous will should be destroyed, or at the very least clearly marked as revoked and stored separately from the current will, so there is no confusion after death about which version applies. Simply writing a new will does not physically destroy the old one, and having several versions in existence, particularly if they are found in different places, can cause real difficulty for executors.

With My Posh Will, updating a will is designed to be simple, so there is little reason to rely on informal changes to an existing document rather than producing a clear, current version.

Making a clean replacement follows a simple sequence. Decide exactly what you want to change and confirm the rest of your wishes remain the same, then draft the new will in full, including a clause that expressly revokes all previous wills and codicils. Read the new draft carefully against the old will to check nothing has been lost by accident, then sign and witness it correctly, following the same formalities required for any will.

Once the new will is safely executed, destroy the old will, or mark it clearly as revoked and store it apart from the current will, and tell your executors that a new version exists and where it is kept. Skipping this last step is a common and entirely avoidable source of confusion after death.

The most frequent mistake is treating a will like an ordinary letter that can be edited by hand, crossing out a name or adding a sentence in the margin. Another is making a new will but forgetting to include a revocation clause, which can leave uncertainty about whether an earlier will still applies to some assets. A third is signing a new will without arranging two independent witnesses who are present together, simply because the change feels minor and less deserving of the same formality as the original will.

Each of these mistakes is avoidable by treating every change, however small, with the same care as making the will in the first place. If in doubt about how a change might interact with the rest of an existing will, it is worth taking advice rather than guessing.