What happens when you intentionally destroy your last will and testament

John: Yes, sir. Thanks for the radio show. I appreciate it. I've been listening for years and I have a question about wills.

Attorney Tom Olsen All right.

John: My wife and I had a will drawn up and everything in it that we wanted, and then some circumstances in our family warranted us to make an adjustment. I was just wondering that that situation now has resolved itself. Can we go back to the old will and just destroy the new one? How does that work?

Attorney Tom Olsen In theory, you could, John, when somebody passes away, as you imagine. Sometimes we find multiple copies of previous wills, and we're always going to look at the one that has the most current recent date on it. John, my concern would be that you destroy what you think is the only one of those copies out there, and lo and behold, the lawyer who drafted it for you has still got a copy or you emailed a copy to somebody else. John, in theory, you could do that simply by destroying your newest will, you go back to the previous will. John, if I had a real comfort level in this, I would suggest that you do a brand new will, even if it says exactly what your old will says. It's got a newer date on it.

John: I see. Well, sure, I understand that. The only copies that I'm aware of is the lawyer's office kept one, and then I have the other one. If I contacted the attorney and had him destroy that one, I'd be okay.

Attorney Tom Olsen John, I'm going to give you a 90% okay, John, I'm not going to give you 100%. It still concerns me.

John: I understand.

Attorney Tom Olsen Because you tell the lawyer to destroy his will. Maybe it gets done, maybe it doesn't. Maybe you pass away and your heirs contact a lawyer and say, "By the way, did you do my dad's will?" "Oh, yes, I got a record of one. It's dated this date." Guess what? It's not the date of the one everybody else is looking at. Well, what happened to that newer will? We're all searching for the newer will. The lawyer said he did a newer will. Where is that one? You see what I'm saying? It can lead to confusion, John. Best practice, in my opinion, is to redo it. Whoever did that will for you, you could go right back to that lawyer and say, "Look, take my 2019 will and just reprint it with today's date. I'll come back down there and sign it." Easy breezy. All right, John. Thank you, John.

John: Understood.

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