Will.com / Wills / Mississippi
Make your own Mississippi will.
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Is a self-written will legal in Mississippi?
Yes. Mississippi recognizes wills you write yourself, as long as they meet the state's signing requirements. The governing statute is Miss. Code §91-5-1 et seq.
Your will needs to be in writing, signed by you, and witnessed by 2 adults. 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). Mississippi also recognizes handwritten ("holographic") wills, written entirely in your own handwriting and signed.
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 Mississippi 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 Mississippi
A Mississippi 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. Mississippi 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.
Mississippi 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 Mississippi 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 Mississippi 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 Mississippi's signing rules were followed.
Self-proving affidavit in Mississippi
Mississippi 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 Mississippi
Miss. Code §91-5-9: a devise or bequest to a subscribing witness is void only if the will cannot otherwise be proven; even then the witness remains competent as to the rest of the will and may be compelled to testify, and a witness who would have taken by intestacy keeps that share up to the value of the voided gift. The voiding is conditional, applying only when the interested witness's testimony is needed to establish the will.
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 Mississippi law rather than by your wishes. The safest practice is to update your will when your family changes.
Miss. Code §91-5-5 (Children born after making of the will): if the testator already had a child or children living when the will was made and published, a child born after that will succeeds to the same portion of the estate as if the parent had died intestate, provided the after-born child is unprovided for by settlement and is neither provided for nor disinherited but only pretermitted; the devisees and legatees contribute proportionately out of the parts devised and bequeathed to them, as in the case of posthumous children. Section 91-5-5 does not reach a testator who had no child living when the will was made, so a first child born after that will is not protected by this section. Update the will after a birth or adoption rather than relying on the statute.
A spouse you married after signing. Updating the will after marriage avoids relying on whatever Mississippi law provides by default.
Miss. Code §91-5-27 (Effect of no provision for husband or wife): when a will makes no provision for the testator's spouse, the survivor's rights are as if the will had contained an unsatisfactory provision and it had been renounced. A renunciation is expressly not necessary, so §91-5-25's ninety-day window is not a precondition; §91-5-25 still measures the share, capped at one-half where no descendant survives, subject to the §91-5-29 separate-property offset.
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