Last Will Testament

You can read, type, print, and staple at the will maker's direction. But you must not decide or even weigh in on the terms of the will. Do not sway the will maker in any way; you must be a neutral actor. Also, do not not use your own handwriting to fill in a fill-in-the-blanks will.

Yes. A will that you write yourself is called a holographic will. Holographic wills are not valid in every state, but they are valid in West Virginia, as long as they are written entirely in the author's handwriting.

The Will must be filed with the Probate Office of the County Clerk in the county where the decedent lived. A Petition for Probate must be filed as well. This requests the appointment of an executor. If there is no Will, the clerk will appoint someone to serve as the Personal Representative of the estate.

Under probate law, wills can only be contested by spouses, children or people who are mentioned in the will or a previous will.A last will and testament can only be contested during the probate process when there is a valid legal question about the document or process under which it was created.

A will doesn't have to be notarized to be valid. But in most states, you'll want to add a self-proving affidavit to your will, which must be signed by your witnesses and notarized.If you sign your will in a lawyer's office, the lawyer will provide a notary public.

No one else is authorized to revoke or change a will for a testator during his lifetime or after. A testator may not delegate the power to change his will to someone else, including an attorney-in-fact.

A notarized will does not need to be probated.When a person dies leaving behind a will that is not notarized, the law requires that its validity be ascertained by a notary or by a court. Similarly, any non-notarized modification made to a will must be probated, whether the will is notarized or not.

No, in West Virginia, you do not need to notarize your will to make it legal.A self-proving will speeds up probate because the court can accept the will without contacting the witnesses who signed it.