How to Update Your Will: When You Need a Codicil vs a Brand New Will

How to update a will: the two real options

You have a will. Something changed. You got married, you got divorced, you had a kid, you sold the house, your sister moved to Portugal, your executor moved to assisted living, your estate doubled, your estate halved. The document on file no longer reflects what you want. You have exactly two ways to fix that: a codicil or a brand new will.

A codicil is a formal amendment, a separate document that says "in my will dated X, I am changing clause Y to read Z, and everything else stays the same." A new will starts over from scratch and explicitly revokes every prior version. Both are legitimate. Both are recognized in every US state under the Uniform Probate Code Section 2-507. The choice between them is mostly about how much you are changing and how much risk you can tolerate in execution.

What a codicil actually is

A codicil has to be executed with the same formalities as the original will. That means the same witness count (two adult witnesses in nearly every state), the same signing ritual, and in many states a notarized self-proving affidavit on top. A codicil scribbled on the back of the original will and initialed in the margin is not a codicil. It is a problem your executor will pay a lawyer to clean up.

Done correctly, a codicil refers back to the original will by date and party, identifies the specific clause being changed, sets out the new language, and confirms that all other provisions remain in force. It then gets signed and witnessed exactly like a will, and it is stored alongside the original. When the time comes, both documents get submitted to probate together, and the court reads them as a single instrument.

What a codicil costs and how long it takes

A lawyer-drafted codicil typically runs $150 to $400, less than the $500 to $2,000 a new will tends to cost. A DIY codicil through an online estate platform can be as cheap as $25 or included in an annual subscription. The drafting time is usually under an hour. The execution ritual takes the same amount of time as a new will, because the witnesses still have to sit there and watch.

What a new will actually is

A new will is exactly what it sounds like: a fresh document that distributes your entire estate, names your executor, sets your guardianship preferences, and addresses every issue your prior will addressed. The first substantive clause should explicitly revoke "all prior wills and codicils made by me." That single sentence does the heavy lifting. Without it, courts in some states will try to read the new will and the old will together, which is exactly the mess the new will was supposed to avoid.

Once executed, the new will becomes the operative document. Best practice is to physically destroy every copy of the old will (shredding, burning, marking each page "REVOKED" in red ink) so there is no chance an outdated version surfaces during probate. The Uniform Probate Code recognizes physical destruction as a valid form of revocation, but explicit written revocation in the new document is what removes any ambiguity.

The honest framework for choosing

Use a codicil only when you are making one or two narrow, surgical changes that do not interact with anything else in the will. Use a new will for everything else. That is the rule a careful estate lawyer would apply if they were billing flat-fee instead of by the hour.

Codicil is the right choice when:

• You are swapping one named executor for another.
• You are changing the cash bequest to a single charity or person.
• You are updating an address or correcting a misspelled name.
• You are removing a single specific bequest (a piece of jewelry, a car) that no longer exists.
• You are adding one new beneficiary for a single new asset.

A new will is the right choice when:

• You got married, divorced, or remarried.
• You had a child or adopted one.
• You moved to a new state (this one is non-negotiable, see below).
• Your estate composition changed materially (you sold a business, inherited a windfall, paid off everything).
• You want to change the residuary clause (the catchall that covers everything not specifically distributed).
• You are changing more than two things at once.
• The original will was hand-typed in 1987 and reads like an Agatha Christie prop.

If you find yourself listing four or five amendments to put into a codicil, stop. You are about to draft a document so dense it functions as a will anyway, and you have given yourself two documents the executor has to reconcile instead of one clean file. The marginal cost of a new will is small. The marginal risk reduction is large.

Why moving states deserves its own paragraph

State law governs probate. A will valid in one state is usually valid in another, but specific provisions (community property language, homestead protections, holographic will recognition, witness requirements) are state-specific. A will drafted in California for community property will read strangely to a Texas probate judge. A holographic will valid in Pennsylvania may be invalid in Florida.

The cleanest move after relocating is a brand new will drafted to the laws of your new state. It is also a chance to update your healthcare proxy, your power of attorney, and your living will, all of which are governed by state-specific statutes and forms. If you are wondering whether you even need to revisit any of this, our piece on whether you need a will at all is the right starting point.

The conflict-clause problem

The single biggest reason careful lawyers default to new wills over codicils: a poorly drafted codicil can conflict with the original document in ways that surface only after death. Imagine a will that says "I leave my house to my daughter Sarah" and a codicil that says "I leave my real property to be sold and the proceeds divided equally among my three children." Which one wins? The codicil, because it is later in time, but the executor still has to argue that point in front of a probate judge, and Sarah's lawyer is going to argue the opposite.

Multiply that by every paragraph in the original will, and you can see how a few amendments add up. A new will avoids the problem entirely because there is only one document, and it says what it says.

How to actually execute either one

Whichever route you pick, the execution checklist is the same:

1. Read the document slowly out loud one time before you sign anything. Catch typos, wrong middle names, wrong dates of birth, wrong account references.
2. Round up two adult witnesses who are not beneficiaries and have no financial stake.
3. Gather everyone in one room. Same room. Same time. Same table.
4. Sign every page (initial each page, full signature on the final page) while the witnesses watch.
5. Witnesses sign while you watch.
6. Notarize the self-proving affidavit, which is a one-page attachment that lets the will be admitted to probate without the witnesses having to appear in court.
7. Destroy every prior version if you executed a new will. Store the codicil with the original will if you executed a codicil.
8. Tell your executor where the document lives.

This is the same ritual for either path. Skipping any step is how people end up with wills that get rejected at probate, which is the worst possible outcome. For a fuller breakdown of the cost picture across both routes, see our guide to how much a will costs.

How often you should be revisiting any of this

A reasonable cadence: full review every three years, plus an immediate review after any of the standard life events (marriage, divorce, birth, death, move, major financial change). The annual nudge is overkill for most people. The "I'll get to it eventually" approach is how families end up with a 2008 will that names a now-deceased executor and an ex-spouse as primary beneficiary.

If your last review was more than three years ago, set aside an hour this week, pull up the current document, and ask yourself two questions: does it still name the right people, and does it still describe the right assets. If both answers are yes, you are done. If either is no, you have your answer about codicil versus new will already.

DocSats lets you draft, store, and update wills entirely on your own device, with the file encrypted before it ever syncs to our servers (so even our team cannot read it), and a tamper-proof hash anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain every time you create a new version. That last part matters here: if there is ever a question about which version of your will is current, the blockchain timestamps prove it. You can revise as often as you need without paying for a new lawyer engagement each time.