My financial situation has changed. Do I need to alter my will? Can I do a codicil? Or do I have to change the whole thing? I’m Sarah Siedentopf. I’m an estate planning attorney in Atlanta, Georgia.

So if your financial situation has changed, the great thing about wills is that they cover everything that you own at the time of death, be it a little or a lot. Perhaps, you did one a while ago and you have more assets than you used to. They’re still covered under your will.

Now, depending on what the will says, you may still wanna make changes. So if your will says 50% to each of my children, and that’s still correct, regardless of how many assets you have, all good. On the other hand, if it says such and such a house just this person, such and such a thing to that person, and those assets have changed and you want to make updates to that, or if we want to add some beneficiaries ’cause we have more money or somebody that was getting 5,000  should now get 25,000, things like that, then yes, we would need to update.

And you do have options. You can do a codicil that is basically an amendment to your will and says take out paragraph X and replace it with the new paragraph X. The deal with codicils is that they do have to be signed with the same requirements as the will. So we need two witnesses and a notary all watching you sign. So in my opinion, they are not significantly easier than a will. On the other hand, I would also argue that they are worse than a will because they can get separated from the will. Either by mistake because they weren’t filed together, or something got in between them, or someone found the will and then immediately stopped looking through your papers. The will could get probated by itself without that codicil. It could also not be my mistake.

Perhaps, someone got more in your original will than in the codicil, and they just don’t find the codicil. Maybe a little on purpose. And again, we’re probating the wrong version of your will. On the other hand, if we do a whole new will, just updating the parts that need updating, and destroying the old original, then we know if an original will is being probated for you. It is the correct one.

So I’m very much a fan of updating the whole will, but doing a codicil only is definitely an option. If you have something that needs updating or you don’t have anything that should be updated, please give me a call, and also please like and subscribe. Thanks!