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A will should be reviewed around every 5 years to ensure it still matches your desires. The best way to update a will in Wisconsin is to simply create a new will. For major life changes such as marriage, divorce, birth of a child, or significant asset changes, it is often easiest to create a new will and revoke the old one, rather than creating confusion in editing the current one.
A well-drafted will covers contingencies that can be reasonably foreseen, such as the unfortunate untimely death of a relative who would have received an inheritance. However, unusual and unpredictable things happen every day, and sometimes they can leave you in a situation where your will is out of step with your current situation. In these cases, it is important to update your will to ensure peace of mind for you and your family.
Updating your will is a weighty process, just like it was to write it in the first place. When circumstances change, it’s good to re-read your will and think about what would happen to your estate if you unexpectedly died. A good first step is to consult an estate planning attorney. They can advise you on how your existing will works in your current circumstances, what effects a change would have, and whether now is a good time to update your will.
You should have an attorney update your will, for the same reasons you should have an attorney draft your will. An estate planning attorney will be able to leverage legal and procedural knowledge and experience to make sure your will accomplishes your goals. Furthermore, an attorney will be the best person to advise you on which type of will update is best for your situation.
When your situation changes and your current will no longer reflects your estate planning goals, you have the option to immediately revoke your current will, even though you don’t have a new one in place yet. You should make sure to contact an attorney first, because without a will, the default rules of Wisconsin’s intestacy laws will govern your estate. If you’re planning on getting a new will, often it’s better to hold off on revoking your old will, because having a will is usually better than not having a will.
Other times, you will want to revoke as soon as possible because the default rules are closer to your wishes than your old will. For example, suppose your will gives 10% of your estate to your best friend, and the rest to your family. However, one day you and your best friend have an irreparable falling-out. If you died tomorrow, you wouldn’t want that friend getting anything from your estate; you would want everything to go to your family. You ask an attorney what you should do. After analyzing your will and your family structure, the attorney might advise you to immediately revoke your will because the default rules will just give your estate to your family, like you want.
Legally speaking, you can revoke your own will by purposefully destroying the physical document–that includes burning it, tearing it up, or ruining it by some other means. Practically speaking, destroying the original document is only the first step. You should make sure that anyone who knows about your will knows that you revoked it, and that all other copies are destroyed.
However, if you burned your original document, that alone wouldn’t stop a beneficiary you gave a copy to from trying to get it held up in probate court. Similarly, you will want to contact the law firm that drafted your will, because they may have a copy on file. If your beneficiaries call, you don’t want the law firm giving them a copy of the will you revoked.
If there’s a copy out there that you can’t make sure is destroyed, you can still effectively revoke your will. And make sure that the people close to you know you did so. When an old beneficiary shows up with the photocopy, your family can challenge it by testifying that they know you revoked the will. The more people who can testify to your revocation, the smaller the chance of a previous beneficiary walking away with part of your estate.
There is more than one way to update your will. In most cases, the best solution is simply making a whole new will.
Usually the best way to “change your will” is actually to just make a new one. By starting fresh, you shed the baggage of the old will, and ensure your desired changes fit into a cohesive document. As long as your new will expressly revokes your old will (which is common in most wills), it will supersede and revoke your old will by virtue of being more recent. However, you will probably still want to go through the revocation steps described above, to avoid any confusion–having 2 different wills floating around can create friction between your beneficiaries.
Another reason to write a new will instead of a codicil is cohesion. A will plus a codicil can be difficult to interpret for purely practical reasons. With a codicil, the original text of the will is still in front of the reader. This means it’s up to your personal representative to read the codicil and recognize what parts are being changed and how. In contrast, a whole new will just says what it says.
For these reasons, codicils are best viewed as specialty documents for specific cases. Because of the complications involved in codicil drafting, it might be just as expensive or more compared to making a new will.
Making alterations to your existing will is almost always a bad idea. It invites challenges, disagreement, and strife. Alterations to your existing will, without the process of a codicil, are not likely to be enforceable.
Sometimes a will’s owner might make small handwritten alterations for purely informational purposes. For example, suppose your will gives your snowmobile “to my niece, Brenda Persson, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.” If Brenda moves, the owner might cross out Oshkosh and handwrite Rhinelander, and initial and date the change. This kind of alteration could be benign and might help the personal representative find Brenda. However, use caution.
As long as Brenda is sufficiently identifiable, there is no requirement that her place of residence be updated. In this case, it’s clear the will is referring to the testator’s niece, by first and last name, who at one time lived in Oshkosh. There is probably only one person that could describe, and there’s no reason to handwrite an update. A will with no handwritten changes is viewed as more stable and legitimate than a will with handwritten changes, even if they are small, due to the risk of misinterpretation of the notes.
If your will is drafted well, it shouldn’t need much updating. The most likely future events will probably be covered by contingencies in the will, and probably some unlikely possible future events, too. However, it is still good to re-assess your will every now and then. If you find you haven’t looked at your will in a few years, give it a check-up to refresh yourself on what it says and whether it still reflects your wishes. Reviewing your estate plan every 5-10 years is a wise practice.
There are many events after which it is important to update your will. Update your will or confirm it has already prepared for the following events:
A well-drafted will should account for future children and will probably not need to be changed. Still, you should check the language of your will, or have an attorney review it, to ensure your new child will be included. You might consider updating the will to add your new child’s name, so they don’t feel left out.
Whether you are dissolving a marriage or entering into one, a change in your marital status is a crucial time to update your will. If you are recently divorced or in the process, you will want to change your will to reflect the divorce. Your wishes for your estate that you established during your marriage probably no longer apply. By the same token, if you are getting married, you will probably want to update your will to account for the changes in your property ownership that occur under Wisconsin’s Marital Property Act, and also to take your spouse into consideration as a beneficiary.
If your assets have significantly increased since you had your will written, you might want to re-assess your distribution plan. Maybe you didn’t think twice about devising 20% of your estate to your nephew when that was only a few thousand dollars, but it’s a different story if it’s significantly more than that.
Additionally, if your estate has grown to exceed the federal lifetime gift tax exemption (about $15,000,000 in 2026), you will want to seek the help of an estate planning attorney to minimize the taxes your estate will owe.
Financial setbacks can be another reason to update your will. With fewer assets to devise, you might want to simplify your distribution plan to make sure the people who need it the most can get a significant amount of your assets.
Sometimes a change in state or federal law can be a reason to update your will. Lawmakers are generally cognizant that their laws could affect existing estate plans, and might limit the changes to wills signed after a certain date–or they might not. An estate planning lawyer will be able to tell you whether your will needs to be updated to account for changes in the law.
It is always a good idea to take another look at your will when your health deteriorates. You will want to double check the terms you wrote while healthy and make sure they still comport with your wishes, since the change in your health could give you a new perspective.
If you want to give a gift from your estate to your grandchildren, you should re-assess your will when a new grandchild is born, for the same reasons as when a new child of yours is born.
But, even if you aren’t planning on giving anything directly to your grandchildren, it is still a good idea to look at your will and see how your distribution plan affects your children and grandchildren. For example, you might want to make sure that your will allows your new grandchild to inherit if their parents unexpectedly die before you.
Not every spat or disagreement necessitates a change to your will. But if you have a serious falling-out with someone you named as a beneficiary, you might want to reduce their share or remove them entirely. Or, perhaps your beneficiary marries someone you don’t get along with, so you want to make sure their spouse can’t become entitled to a portion of your estate. It might be appropriate to update your will to reduce or eliminate their share.
If you find yourself going to update your will after every visit with your relatives, you might want to consider looking into a trust plan instead. A living trust’s flexibility and a trustee’s discretion might serve you better than getting a new will every year, or having a stack of codicils.
Sometimes it isn’t your relationship with a beneficiary, but a change in that beneficiary’s personal circumstances that necessitates an update to your will. For example, if one of your beneficiaries becomes disabled and starts receiving government assistance, you might want to update your will to include a special needs trust, so they don’t lose their benefits upon inheriting. It is also a good idea to consider reducing the inheritance or setting up a trust for a beneficiary who is likely to spend the money unwisely, such as due to a substance abuse problem.
Your legal ability to make or revoke a will is called your “testamentary capacity,” or just “capacity.” Generally, as long as you are of sound mind, you have capacity. When your mental faculties start to fail, as often happens near the end of a person’s life, your capacity might come into question.
As long as your will was properly executed, a probate court will assume you had capacity to make and sign it. However, someone with the motive to challenge your will, such as a child you disinherited, might argue that you did not have capacity when you signed your will. The standards for capacity are not clearly defined in Wisconsin’s statutes. Instead, they come from a large body of case law, and there is no hard and fast rule for who has capacity and who doesn’t.
The challenger would need to present “clear, convincing, and satisfactory evidence” that you were not in your right mind at the moment you signed the document. Often this kind of will challenge is a discussion of “undue influence,” where the challenger tries to prove that. An example of this would be arguing a sibling manipulated the will’s creator into signing the new will to increase their own share of the estate.
For these reasons, it is best to get your will in place and signed as early as possible. If you wait until your mental faculties start to deteriorate, your will could be easier to challenge in court.
