How to Make a Last Will and Testament in Georgia

To make a Last Will and Testament in Georgia, you need to be at least 14 years old and of sound mind, put your wishes in writing, sign the document, and have two witnesses watch you sign and then sign it themselves in your presence. Add a notarized self-proving affidavit and the will can later be admitted to probate without your witnesses having to appear. Miss any of the execution steps and a court can throw the whole thing out.

Who Can Make a Will

Georgia sets a low bar for eligibility, but it is strict about what it asks for. You must be at least 14. You also need testamentary capacity, which the law breaks into three pieces: you understand you are signing a will, you know what property you own, and you are aware of the people who would ordinarily inherit from you, meaning your spouse, children, and other close family. A felony conviction does not take away your right to make one.¹

Capacity is measured at the moment you sign. Someone with dementia can sign a valid will during a lucid interval, but if the will is challenged later, the fight will be over whether all three elements of understanding were present at the exact moment of signing.

The Execution Steps

Every requirement below traces back to a single statute, and Georgia courts enforce it literally.²

Put It in Writing

The will must be a written document. Georgia does not recognize oral wills, video wills, or any other non-written format.²

Sign It Yourself

You sign the document. Your full name, initials, or a mark all count. If a physical condition prevents you from signing, another person can sign for you, but only in your presence and only at your explicit direction.²

Have Two Witnesses Sign

Two witnesses must watch you sign, or watch you acknowledge that the signature on the will is yours, and then sign the will themselves in your presence. Georgia’s self-proving affidavit statute indicates that witnesses should be at least 14 years old.³ No one may sign a witness’s name for them, even at the witness’s direction.²

Pick the Right Witnesses

This is where people most often stumble. A beneficiary named in your will can legally serve as a witness, but doing so puts their inheritance at risk. If a witness is also a beneficiary, that person’s gift under the will is void unless at least two other witnesses who are not beneficiaries also signed. The safe rule: use two disinterested witnesses who receive nothing under the will. A witness’s spouse can be a beneficiary, though a court may look more closely at that witness’s credibility.⁴

Adding a Self-Proving Affidavit

A self-proving affidavit is optional, but skipping it creates work for your family later. You, your two witnesses, and a notary public sign a sworn statement confirming that all the execution requirements were met. The affidavit follows a specific format set by Georgia law and must carry the notary’s official seal.³

The payoff is real. Without the affidavit, the probate court may need to track down your witnesses years later to confirm the signing actually happened. With it, the will can be admitted to probate without any witness testimony.³ You can add the affidavit at the time of signing or any later date during your lifetime, as long as you and the original witnesses are still alive to sign it.

What to Put in the Will

The signing ceremony gets the document over the legal threshold. The content is what actually controls your estate.

Naming an Executor

Your executor (Georgia also uses the term personal representative) gathers assets, pays debts, and distributes what is left. Choose someone organized and willing to deal with banks, courts, and family. Name at least one alternate in case your first choice cannot serve. Non-residents can serve, but the court typically requires additional steps such as posting a bond.

Consider granting your executor specific powers in the will, like selling real estate or investing estate funds without a separate court order for each transaction. Those powers save time and legal fees during administration.

Waiving Bond

Unless your will says otherwise, the probate court can require your executor to post a surety bond, an insurance policy that protects beneficiaries against mismanagement. A clause waiving bond saves your executor that cost. The court can still require bond later if a beneficiary raises legitimate concerns.⁵

Distributing Your Property

You can make specific gifts of particular items, such as a named bank account, a piece of jewelry, or a vehicle, to specific people. Everything left over after those specific gifts is your residuary estate, and you should direct how it is divided, usually as percentage shares among your main beneficiaries. Be precise. Vague language like “my savings” when you have four savings accounts is exactly the kind of ambiguity that fuels probate litigation.

Nominating a Guardian for Minor Children

If you have children under 18, your will is where you nominate a guardian for them.⁶ A court still has to approve the appointment and will consider the child’s best interests, but a nomination in a properly executed will carries heavy weight. Name an alternate. If both parents die without naming anyone, the court picks a guardian with no guidance from you.

Debts, Taxes, and Funeral Expenses

Your will should say how debts, funeral costs, and any tax obligations are paid. You can direct that they come out of the residuary estate before it is divided, or designate a specific account. If the will is silent, the executor follows Georgia’s statutory priority of claims, which begins with year’s support for your family, then funeral expenses, then administrative costs.⁷

Executor Compensation

Your will can set the executor’s fee at whatever amount you and the executor agree on. If the will is silent, Georgia law provides a default: 2.5% of all money the executor collects on behalf of the estate, plus 2.5% of all money the executor pays out for debts, taxes, and distributions. For property delivered in kind rather than sold, the court can award up to 3% of the appraised value.⁸ Spelling out compensation in the will avoids friction between the executor and your beneficiaries.

Assets Your Will Does Not Control

A common misconception is that a will governs everything you own. It doesn’t. Several types of assets pass directly to a named beneficiary or co-owner no matter what your will says:

Life insurance proceeds go to whoever is named as beneficiary on the policy.
Retirement accounts, including 401(k)s and IRAs, pass to the beneficiary on file with the account custodian.
Payable-on-death bank accounts transfer to the designated payee at your death.
Jointly owned property with survivorship rights automatically passes to the surviving co-owner.
Georgia transfer-on-death deeds move real property to a named beneficiary without probate.

If your will leaves your bank account to your daughter but the account’s payable-on-death form names your brother, your brother gets the money. The beneficiary designation wins every time. When you draft the will, pull every beneficiary form and confirm each one lines up with your overall plan. This is where estate plans quietly fall apart.

Year’s Support Can Override the Will

Georgia has a provision that outranks both your will and your creditors. Your surviving spouse and minor children can claim year’s support: property from the estate for their maintenance during the 12 months following your death.⁹

Year’s support ranks first among all claims against an estate, ahead of funeral expenses, administrative costs, creditors, and the bequests in your will.⁷ The amount is not fixed. The surviving spouse petitions the probate court, which sets an appropriate figure based on the family’s needs and the estate’s size. In a smaller estate, a year’s support award can consume everything before any beneficiary under the will receives a dollar. If you are married or have minor children, plan for the possibility.

Changing or Revoking the Will Later

A will is not a one-time decision. You can change or cancel it at any point before your death.¹⁰

Codicils

A codicil is a written amendment that changes part of an existing will without replacing the whole document. It must be executed with the same formalities as the will itself: in writing, signed by you, and witnessed by two people.² A codicil missing any of those steps is invalid, and the original will stands. For anything beyond a minor tweak, most estate planners recommend drafting a fresh will rather than layering codicils.

Full Revocation

You have two ways to revoke. The cleaner method is to sign a new will that states it revokes all prior wills and codicils. That new will has to meet every execution requirement, but once it does, the old one is gone.

The other method is physical destruction with intent to revoke. Georgia law describes this as “destruction or obliteration” done with revocation in mind.¹¹ If you obliterate or cancel a significant portion of the document, the law presumes you intended to revoke it, though the presumption can be rebutted. Someone else can destroy the will for you, but only in your presence and at your direction.

Destroying a later will does not automatically revive an earlier one. A previously revoked will stays revoked unless you take affirmative steps to bring it back, and Georgia’s rules on revival turn on how the intervening document was itself revoked and what your intent was.¹² The safest path is to execute a fresh will with the terms you want now.

What Happens If You Don’t Make One

Dying without a valid will means Georgia’s intestacy statute distributes your property according to a formula tied to family relationships, and the results often surprise people. If your spouse survives you but you have no children, your spouse inherits everything. If you have both a spouse and children, your spouse splits the estate equally with the children, but the spouse’s share cannot fall below one-third.¹³ Four children and a spouse means each child gets about a sixth and your spouse gets a third.

With no surviving spouse, the children inherit in equal shares, and descendants of a deceased child step into that child’s place. Without spouse or children, the estate goes to parents, then siblings, then more distant relatives in a fixed order, and eventually to the state if no heirs can be found. A properly executed will overrides every one of those defaults.

1
Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-10 – Minimum Age; Conviction of Crime
2
Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-20 – Required Writing; Signing; Witnesses; Codicil
3
Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-24 – Self-Proved Will or Codicil
4
Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-23 – Testamentary Gift to Witness
5
Justia. Georgia Code 53-6-53 – Personal Representative Serving Without Bond
6
Justia. Georgia Code 39-1-1 – Age of Legal Majority
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Justia. Georgia Code 53-7-40 – Liability of Estate; Priority of Claims
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Justia. Georgia Code 53-6-60 – Amount
9
Justia. Georgia Code 53-3-1 – Preference and Entitlement
10
Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-40 – Power of Testator
11
Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-44 – Destruction or Obliteration of Will
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Justia. Georgia Code 53-4-45 – Revival or Republication of Will
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FindLaw. Georgia Code 53-2-1 – Intestacy