What makes a will valid? The signing and witnessing rules explained

Four rules, one very common mistake

Every year, families discover after a death that a carefully written will has a problem nobody spotted at the time: one of the two witnesses was also a beneficiary, or the witnesses were never in the room together, or the will was signed but never witnessed at all. The rules that decide whether a will is legally valid in England and Wales are almost two centuries old. They come from section 9 of the Wills Act 1837, and they are strict: a will that misses a formality is not "mostly valid". It is invalid.

This guide explains each requirement, who can and cannot act as a witness, why a beneficiary who witnesses loses their gift, and what happens when execution goes wrong. It covers England and Wales, and it is general information to help you understand the rules, not legal or financial advice for your own situation. Before a signing session, it is worth running through our making a will checklist so nothing on the list below gets missed.

The section 9 requirements

Section 9 sets out four conditions. No will is valid unless all of them are met.

1. It is in writing, and signed by the testator (the person making the will), or by some other person in the testator's presence and by their direction. Typed, printed or handwritten all count as "writing". Someone who cannot physically sign can direct another person to sign for them, provided it happens in front of them.
2. The testator intended the signature to give effect to the will. The signature must be an act of execution, not a stray mark. In practice, signing at the end of the document beneath a standard attestation clause puts this beyond doubt.
3. The signature is made or acknowledged in the presence of two or more witnesses present at the same time. Both witnesses must be there together, either watching the testator sign or hearing the testator confirm that an existing signature is theirs.
4. Each witness then attests and signs the will, or acknowledges their signature, in the presence of the testator. Interestingly, the witnesses do not need to sign in front of each other, only in front of the testator. GOV.UK's guidance on making your will legal confirms the same point: the witnesses "do not need to sign at the same time", but each must have a clear view of the testator signing, and the testator a clear view of each witness signing.

On top of the execution formalities, GOV.UK adds three personal requirements: the testator must be 18 or over, must be of sound mind, and must make the will voluntarily. The formalities and the personal requirements are separate pillars, and a will needs all of them.

Who can witness a will, and who should not

The bar for being a witness is low. No solicitor is required, no doctor, no commissioner for oaths. GOV.UK says both witnesses should be over 18, and each needs to be capable of seeing the signature being made. Beyond that, the real rule is about independence.

Witness	Will valid?	Effect
Independent adult (neighbour, colleague, friend who inherits nothing)	Yes	None. This is the safe choice.
A beneficiary named in the will	Yes	The gift to that beneficiary is void under section 15.
The spouse or civil partner of a beneficiary	Yes	The gift to their partner is void under section 15.
An executor who is not a beneficiary	Yes	None. An executor may witness, though many practitioners avoid it for tidiness.
Only one witness, or witnesses not present together at signing	No	The will fails section 9 entirely.

The beneficiary rule catches more people than any other. Under section 15 of the Wills Act 1837, any gift to an attesting witness, or to the witness's spouse, is "utterly null and void". Note the shape of the penalty: the will survives, the witness's signature still counts, but the gift disappears. GOV.UK puts it plainly: "You cannot leave your witnesses (or their married partners) anything in your will."

A worked example: the £60,000 signature

Take Priya, who makes a will leaving her flat to her brother Daniel, £60,000 to her closest friend Marta, and the rest of her estate to charity. On signing day, her chosen witnesses cancel, so Marta and Marta's husband Tomas step in. Both watch Priya sign, both sign in front of her. Every section 9 box is ticked, and the will is perfectly valid.

But Marta is a beneficiary and an attesting witness, so section 15 voids her £60,000 legacy. It would make no difference if only Tomas had signed, because a gift to a witness's spouse is voided too. The £60,000 does not go to Marta's family; it falls into the residue and passes to the charity. Daniel still gets the flat, the charity does rather better than intended, and Marta receives nothing. One different signature on the day, from a neighbour with no stake in the will, would have saved the whole gift.

Presence means physical presence again

During the pandemic, the law was temporarily changed so that "presence" for witnessing purposes included presence by video link. That rule, inserted as section 9(2) by the Wills Act 1837 (Electronic Communications) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Order 2020, applied only to wills made between 31 January 2020 and 31 January 2024. It has now expired. A will signed today must be witnessed by two people who are physically in the room, with a clear line of sight to the signature. If you are dealing with a will that was made during the window and witnessed over video, the position is more nuanced, and our guide to remote and video witnessing of wills covers when those wills are valid and what to check.

Execution is only one of three validity pillars

Getting the signing ceremony right proves the will was properly executed. Two further pillars have to stand as well:

• Testamentary capacity. The testator must understand what a will does, broadly what they own, and who might expect to inherit, and must not be affected by a disorder of the mind that poisons those decisions. This test comes from the 1870 case of Banks v Goodfellow and it is assessed at the time the will is made, which matters enormously where dementia is in the picture. Our guide to mental capacity, dementia and will validity goes through the test in detail.
• Genuine free will. A will procured by coercion, fraud or forgery can be challenged even though every formality was observed. The courts distinguish persuasion, which is allowed, from pressure that overpowers the testator's own judgement, which is not. Our overview of will fraud, forgery and undue influence claims explains how those challenges work.

A will can therefore be flawlessly signed and still fail, or be challenged years later. Equally, a homemade will scribbled on plain paper is fully valid if it meets section 9 and the testator had capacity and acted freely.

What happens if the rules were not followed

England and Wales has no rescue mechanism for a defectively executed will. If a section 9 requirement was missed, the document is not a will. Two outcomes follow:

• If there is an earlier will that was validly executed and never revoked, that earlier will governs the estate, however out of date it may be.
• If there is no earlier will, the estate passes under the intestacy rules, a fixed statutory order of relatives that takes no account of what the failed will said. Our guide to who inherits if there is no will shows how that order runs.

Two related traps are worth knowing. First, GOV.UK's guidance on updating a will confirms that getting married cancels any will made before the marriage, so a valid will can be silently revoked by a wedding. Second, changes to an existing will only work through a codicil, and a codicil must be signed and witnessed under exactly the same rules as the will itself. Crossings-out and margin notes added after execution have no effect.

Getting the signing day right

The mechanics are simple once you know them: one document, the testator and both witnesses in the same room, testator signs first in full view of both, each witness signs in full view of the testator, and neither witness (nor anyone married to a witness) takes a penny under the will. Run through our making a will checklist before the appointment, and see our wills pillar guide for the wider decisions that sit around execution, from choosing executors to reviewing the will every five years as GOV.UK suggests.

If anything about your situation is out of the ordinary, perhaps a testator whose capacity may later be questioned, a witness pool full of family members, or doubts about a will that has already been signed, that is the moment to bring in a wills and probate specialist. Fixing an execution problem while the testator is alive is straightforward; discovering one after a death rarely is. We can put you in touch with a specialist who reviews and executes wills properly the first time.