The Online Will You Just Signed May Not Count in New York

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New York passed a law letting people sign a will on a screen. It has been on the books since last December. It still does not work, and it will not work for more than another year.

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Governor Kathy Hochul signed the New York Electronic Wills Act on December 12, 2025, adding a new Part 6 to Article 3 of the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law. A chapter amendment adopted in 2026 finished the statutory framework. By the terms of the act itself, it takes effect on December 12, 2027.

The headlines did not always carry that date. The result, on Long Island and everywhere else in the state, is a stretch of time where people believe they have done something they have not done.

Jay Sheryll, founder of Sheryll Law, P.C. in Riverhead, says the conversation now comes up regularly.

"Somebody read that New York legalized online wills, so they went and made one," Sheryll said. "They signed it on a tablet, two people clicked a box somewhere, and the PDF went into a folder on a laptop. In New York today that document does nothing at all."

Until December 2027, the rules are the ones that have governed New York wills for decades. EPTL 3-2.1 requires a paper document. The person making the will signs at the end. They sign in front of two witnesses, or acknowledge to each witness that the signature is theirs. They have to tell the witnesses the document is a will. And both witnesses have to sign within a single thirty-day period.

The part that catches people is subtle. Online will services can produce a document that satisfies New York law. The language is usually not the problem. The problem is the half hour after the download.

"The form is almost always fine," Sheryll said. "Where it falls apart is the signing, because nobody treats that part as serious. Who was actually in the room. Whether you said out loud that this was your will. Whether both witnesses signed inside the window. Those are the questions a Surrogate asks years later, and by then the one person who could answer them is gone."

Suffolk County wills are offered for probate at the Surrogate's Court in Riverhead. Nassau County wills go to Mineola. In either building, an executor has to prove the will was signed properly before the court will issue Letters Testamentary and let anyone touch the estate.

New York courts already have some history with screen-based signings. From April 7, 2020 to June 25, 2021, an executive order allowed wills to be executed remotely during the pandemic. Surrogate's Courts have since issued a series of decisions working through whether those wills can be admitted. The litigation that followed is part of why the Legislature built a long runway into the new act.

That act, when it does arrive, will not be the loose and convenient thing many people picture. An electronic will has to be a record readable as text at the time it is signed. It has to carry statutory warning language in a specified typeface and size. At least two witnesses, each a domiciliary of a state, must sign within thirty days of watching the signing or hearing the acknowledgment, and they may do that in the physical or electronic presence of the person making the will. The record has to be created and stored with technology that shows the authenticity of the signature and any later changes to the document, and it has to carry audit trail data.

Then there is the requirement with no paper equivalent. An electronic will must be filed electronically with the New York State Unified Court System within thirty days of execution. If it is not filed in time, the will is invalid.

"That filing rule is where people are going to get hurt," Sheryll said. "A paper will can sit in a drawer for thirty years and nobody ever has to tell a court it exists. The electronic version has a thirty-day clock running the moment you sign, and if you miss it the document is void. That is not a lighter process. It is a different process with a deadline bolted onto it."

Bar association committees have flagged several open questions, including how identity will be verified, exactly when the thirty-day filing clock starts, and how courts will handle claims of incapacity or undue influence when there was no room and nobody physically present.

For now, Sheryll's advice to anyone who signed something online in the last year is short. Find out whether it was printed and witnessed on paper. If it was not, treat it as a draft and nothing more. An older paper will is still valid, and the new law does not disturb it. And there is no reason to wait for December 2027, because the signing requirements that take effect then are stricter in several ways, not looser.

The outcome he wants people to avoid is the one that is easiest to stumble into.

"The bad version of this is somebody who had a perfectly good old will, decided the online one replaced it, and threw the old one away," Sheryll said. "Now there is no valid new will and no old one either. The estate passes under the intestacy rules, and the statute picks the heirs instead of the person who died."

About Sheryll Law, P.C.

Sheryll Law, P.C. is a Riverhead-based estate planning and elder law firm serving families across Long Island. Jay Sheryll founded the firm in 2017, and it handles wills, trusts, Medicaid and long-term care planning, probate and estate administration for clients throughout Suffolk and Nassau counties.

To learn more, visit sheryll-law.com.

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