Make your own Louisiana will.
Yours in about 20 minutes. Legally valid in Louisiana. Free to create, or add secure online document storage with the $29/year subscription.
Is a self-written will legal in Louisiana?
Yes. Louisiana recognizes wills you write yourself, as long as they meet the state's signing requirements. The governing statute is La. Civ. Code Arts. 1570-1611 (notarial testament Art. 1576; olographic testament Art. 1575).
Your will needs to be in writing, signed by you, and witnessed by 2 adults. Louisiana also requires notarization at signing. Louisiana also recognizes handwritten ("holographic") wills, written entirely in your own handwriting and signed.
You must be at least 16 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 Louisiana 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 Louisiana
A Louisiana 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. Louisiana requires the same 2-witness, notarized 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.
Louisiana 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 Louisiana courts.
- 3
Sign with witnesses
Print and sign in front of 2 adult witnesses and a notary. 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 Louisiana 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 Louisiana's signing rules were followed.
Self-proving affidavit in Louisiana
Louisiana 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.
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 Louisiana
Witness incompetence: La. Civ. Code art. 1581 (as amended by Acts 2025, No. 30) bars persons who are insane, blind, under the age of 16, or unable to sign their name. The pre-Act-30 bar on witnesses who are deaf or unable to read was eliminated. Spouse-of-legatee disqualification: La. Civ. Code art. 1582.1 expressly provides that a person may not be a witness to a testament if that person is the spouse of a legatee at the time of execution. Interested-witness rule: La. Civ. Code art. 1582 governs a witness or notary who is himself a legatee: the testament stays valid, the legacy to the witness or notary is invalid, and a witness who would be an intestate heir may receive the lesser of the intestate share or the legacy. Art. 1582.1 applies the parallel rule to a legacy to a witness's spouse.
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 Louisiana law rather than by your wishes. The safest practice is to update your will when your family changes.
Louisiana has no Uniform Probate Code style pretermitted-heir statute. Forced heirship covers the same ground, and who qualifies is narrow. Under La. Civ. Code art. 1493(A) forced heirs are descendants of the first degree, meaning children rather than descendants generally, who at the decedent's death are 23 years of age or younger, or descendants of the first degree of any age who because of mental incapacity or physical infirmity are permanently incapable of taking care of their persons or administering their estates at the decedent's death. A person is 23 or younger until attaining the age of 24 (art. 1493(D)), and permanent incapacity includes a descendant who at the decedent's death has, according to medical documentation, an inherited incurable disease or condition that may render them incapable in the future (art. 1493(E)). A grandchild is not a forced heir in their own right, and takes only by representation: where a child predeceases the decedent, representation operates for forced heirship only if that child would have been 23 or younger at the decedent's death (art. 1493(B)), or, regardless of that child's age, in favor of a grandchild who is permanently incapable in the sense described (art. 1493(C)). A forced heir may not be deprived of the legitime unless the decedent has just cause to disinherit (La. Civ. Code art. 1494), and the causes are the limited list in art. 1621, each of which must have occurred before the instrument that disinherits the heir was executed (art. 1621(B)). Donations inter vivos and mortis causa may not exceed three-fourths of the donor's property where one forced heir survives, or one-half where two or more do, so the forced portion is one-fourth for a single forced heir and one-half for two or more (art. 1495).
A spouse you married after signing. Updating the will after marriage avoids relying on whatever Louisiana law provides by default.
Louisiana has no omitted-spouse statute analogous to Uniform Probate Code §2-301 or Cal. Prob. Code §21610. A surviving spouse omitted from the deceased spouse's pre-marriage testament takes no automatic share of the testate succession by virtue of the omission alone, and three separate civil-law institutions carry the protection instead. First, the community property regime (La. Civ. Code arts. 2334 et seq.) gives each spouse a one-half interest in property acquired during the community regardless of testamentary disposition. Second, where the deceased spouse is survived by descendants, the surviving spouse has a legal usufruct over the decedent's share of the community property to the extent the decedent has not disposed of it by testament, and that usufruct terminates when the surviving spouse dies or remarries, whichever comes first (art. 890); a testament that disposes of the decedent's community share defeats the usufruct rather than triggering it. Third, the marital portion is available where a spouse dies rich in comparison with the surviving spouse (art. 2432), and its quantum is fixed: one-fourth of the succession in ownership if the decedent died without children, the same fraction in usufruct for life if survived by three or fewer children, and a child's share in that usufruct if survived by more than three, capped in every case at one million dollars (art. 2434). Forced-heir descendants remain entitled to the legitime (art. 1493) regardless of marital status. A spouse who wants a share fixed by testament has to update the will after the marriage.
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