Will requirements in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania requires you to be at least 18 and of sound mind. Capacity is measured at the moment of signing and asks whether you understood the nature of the act, the general extent of your property, and the people who would naturally expect to inherit.

A Pennsylvania will does not need a notary to be valid — indeed it does not need witnesses either. What notarization buys is the self-proving affidavit, and in Pennsylvania that has a more concrete payoff than in most states.

Because Pennsylvania requires two witnesses to prove your signature at probate, a will that is not self-proved leaves your executor having to find people who can establish that the signature is genuinely yours, potentially many years later. A self-proving affidavit removes that requirement entirely. For a state where witnesses are optional at signing, the affidavit is the single most useful thing you can add.

Pennsylvania recognises handwritten wills, though it arrives there differently from other states. Most states that accept holographic wills have a specific statute for them. Pennsylvania does not need one: because a valid will requires only that it be in writing and signed at the end, a wholly handwritten will already satisfies the general rule.

The proof requirement still applies. A handwritten will must be proved at probate like any other, and without a self-proving affidavit that means two witnesses establishing the signature is yours. Pennsylvania does not recognise oral wills in any circumstances.

Pennsylvania permits a small estate to be settled on petition where it falls below a statutory limit, without full administration.

Confirm the current figure with the Register of Wills or the Orphans' Court in the relevant county. Pennsylvania's procedure runs through a court petition rather than a pure affidavit, so it is worth asking what the process involves as well as what the threshold is.

Pennsylvania is a common law property state. Ownership follows title rather than being automatically shared between spouses because property was acquired during the marriage.

A surviving spouse has an elective share, so a spouse generally cannot be disinherited by will alone. Pennsylvania also has an inheritance tax that applies at different rates depending on the beneficiary's relationship to you, and it reaches transfers to children as well as more distant beneficiaries — unusual among states that retain such a tax. It does not affect validity, but it affects what people receive.

Pennsylvania provides a statutory living will recording treatment preferences and a health-care power of attorney naming someone to make medical decisions when you cannot.

The financial power of attorney is notably more demanding than the will. A Pennsylvania power of attorney must be signed before a notary and two witnesses, and it carries statutory notice and acknowledgment requirements. It is a genuine quirk that the document requiring no witnesses is the will, while the power of attorney requires both a notary and two witnesses — so do not assume the formalities you followed for one carry over to the other.