Make your own Indiana will.
Yours in about 20 minutes. Legally valid in Indiana. Free to create, or add secure online document storage with the $29/year subscription.
Is a self-written will legal in Indiana?
Yes. Indiana recognizes wills you write yourself, as long as they meet the state's signing requirements. The governing statute is Ind. Code §29-1-5-1 et seq.
Your will needs to be in writing, signed by you, and witnessed by 2 adults who are present at the same time. You don't need a notary for the will itself to be valid, but adding a notarized "self-proving" affidavit makes the probate process faster later (this tool generates that for you automatically).
You must be at least 18 years old and of sound mind. Choose witnesses who don't inherit under your will: some states void or reduce a gift to a witness, and the exact Indiana rule is covered below. This tool walks you through the rules so you don't trip over them.
A will you write yourself has the same legal force as one drafted by an attorney, provided you follow the signing rules. Courts admit self-written wills to probate every day. An attorney's value is in advising on complex estates, not in drafting the document itself.
What it costs to make a will in Indiana
A Indiana estate-planning attorney typically charges $300 to $600 for a simple will, and $1,000 to $1,500 for a will-plus-revocable-trust package. Rates run higher in dense metros and lower in rural areas. Most attorneys bill at $250 to $400 per hour and need one or two meetings to draft a basic will.
You can also write a will entirely from scratch with a sheet of paper and a pen, with no software at all. Indiana requires the same 2-witness signing process regardless of who drafts the document. The risk with a from-scratch will is technical: a missing self-proving affidavit, a witness who's also a beneficiary, or wording that creates ambiguity for the probate court. That's what this tool prevents.
Will.com is free at the document level. The $29/year subscription adds cloud-stored, zero-knowledge-encrypted access so you can edit and update your plan as life changes.
Indiana will requirements at a glance
How it works
- 1
Answer a few questions
About you, your family, and what you own.
- 2
Download your will
A complete, personalized document, formatted for Indiana courts.
- 3
Sign with witnesses
Print and sign in front of 2 adult witnesses. Keep the signed copy somewhere safe.
When you might want an attorney instead
An online will works for most people. It's the right tool when your situation is straightforward: you want to leave your assets to family or friends, you don't have complex tax issues, and you're not anticipating a fight over your estate.
Consider hiring an attorney if any of these apply:
- Your estate is large enough to trigger federal estate tax (over $15 million in 2026) or Indiana estate or inheritance tax.
- You own a business, complex investments, or assets in multiple states or countries.
- You're in a blended family, especially if you want to leave assets to a current spouse while protecting children from a prior relationship.
- You have a child or beneficiary with special needs and want a supplemental-needs trust that won't disqualify them from public benefits.
- You expect someone to contest the will, or you're disinheriting a close family member.
- You have substantial retirement accounts and want sophisticated beneficiary planning.
If none of these apply, an online will is genuinely fine. The legal validity of your will doesn't depend on who drafted it, only on whether Indiana's signing rules were followed.
Self-proving affidavit in Indiana
Indiana recognizes self-proving affidavits. Will.com attaches one to your will: a short statement your witnesses sign in front of a notary, swearing to what they saw when you signed. See Ind. Code §29-1-5-3.1.
A self-proven will skips the requirement to track down witnesses years later for the probate court. It's optional, but adding the affidavit at signing time saves your executor work. Will.com generates the affidavit alongside the will.
Who can witness your will in Indiana
Ind. Code §29-1-5-2: a beneficial disposition under the will is void as to a witness whose testimony or signature is required to prove the will, but only to the extent the disposition exceeds what the witness would have taken in intestacy. The will itself remains valid notwithstanding the purge. The purge does not apply if the will is duly attested by two other competent and disinterested witnesses (i.e., two disinterested witnesses are sufficient to save the gift). Practical implication: use two demonstrably disinterested witnesses (no beneficiary, no spouse of a beneficiary) to avoid risking a §29-1-5-2 challenge to any beneficiary-witness gift, and note that §29-1-5-2(d) expressly provides that naming a person as executor, trustee, guardian, or counsel for the estate does not by itself make that person interested, so a fiduciary nominee is a permissible witness.
Family changes after you sign
A child born or adopted after the will. A child who arrives after you sign, and who isn't named or accounted for in the will, is covered by Indiana law rather than by your wishes. The safest practice is to update your will when your family changes.
Ind. Code §29-1-3-8: a child born or adopted after the testator made the will, whether that child is born before or after the testator's death, and for whom the will fails to provide, receives a share in the estate equal in value to what the child would have received had the testator died intestate. Two exceptions defeat it: it appears from the will that the omission was intentional, or both of the following are true, that when the will was executed the testator had one or more children known to the testator to be living and that the testator devised substantially all of the estate to the spouse who survives the testator (§29-1-3-8(a)). That second exception is conjunctive, so both facts are required, and note that it turns on a devise to the surviving spouse rather than to the omitted child's other parent, which is not how the Uniform Probate Code frames it. Indiana has not adopted the Uniform Probate Code's outside-transfer exception, so a nonprobate transfer to the omitted child does not by itself defeat the claim. A parallel rule covers a child the testator believed dead when the will was made, unless it appears from the will or from other evidence that the testator would not have devised anything to that child had the testator known the child was alive (§29-1-3-8(b)); unlike the (a) exceptions, that one may be established by evidence outside the will.
A spouse you married after signing. Updating the will after marriage avoids relying on whatever Indiana law provides by default.
Indiana has no omitted-spouse statute and no Uniform Probate Code §2-301 analog. A surviving spouse omitted from a pre-marriage will is protected by the election to take against the will under Ind. Code §29-1-3-1, which yields one-half of the net personal and real estate; but a second or subsequent spouse who never at any time had children by the decedent, where the decedent left a child or the descendants of a child by a previous spouse, takes instead one-third of the net personal estate plus 25% of the fair market value of the testator's real property at death less liens and encumbrances (§29-1-3-1(a)). The childless condition is part of that variant, not just the fact of being a later spouse. In computing the net estate the court considers only property that would have passed under the laws of descent and distribution. The election is time-limited: it must be made not later than three months after the order admitting the will to probate, extended where litigation is pending that would affect the amount of the spouse's share (§29-1-3-2), and it must be in writing, signed and acknowledged, and filed with the clerk of the court (§29-1-3-3). The §29-1-4-1 family allowance of $25,000 also runs against the probate estate. Indiana has no automatic post-marriage revocation rule: under Ind. Code §29-1-5-6 no written will is revoked except by the testator, or another person in the testator's presence and at the testator's direction, destroying or mutilating it with intent to revoke, or by a later writing executed as Ind. Code §29-1-5-3 or §29-1-5-3.1 requires, and marriage is not among the exceptions this article provides, so marriage after will execution does not revoke the prior will. Divorce is the opposite: under Ind. Code §29-1-5-8, if the testator's marriage is dissolved or annulled after the will is made, all provisions in the will in favor of the former spouse are revoked as of the dissolution or annulment, and they are reinstated only if the testator remarries that former spouse.
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