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Kansas Will Requirements
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Kansas Will Requirements

Kansas will requirements under K.S.A. 59-606: two witnesses, no handwritten wills, and a marriage plus a child that wipes out the whole document.

By Settled Editorial

A Kansas will must be in writing, signed at the end by the person making it, and attested and subscribed in that person's presence by two or more competent witnesses who either watched the signature happen or heard the testator acknowledge the will. K.S.A. 59-606 sets all of it. Kansas does not accept handwritten wills without witnesses, and it has no electronic wills act.

The execution rules sit in Article 6 of Chapter 59 of the Kansas Statutes Annotated, the Kansas probate code. Every rule on this page was read in the Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes compilation on 2026-09-08, section by section, and each one is cited where it appears.

Read this page as a map of the statutes rather than a signing kit. It is general information about Kansas law and not advice about your estate. A licensed Kansas attorney should look at any plan that involves real property, a blended family, or a dispute you can already see coming.

A valid will does not keep an estate out of court. K.S.A. 59-616 is blunt about it: no will is effectual to pass real or personal property unless it has been duly admitted to probate. The will names who inherits and who serves, and the estate still moves through the district court as described in the Kansas probate process. What happens with no valid will is decided by the Kansas intestacy statutes instead.

Who Can Make a Kansas Will

K.S.A. 59-601 is one sentence. Any person of sound mind, and possessing the rights of majority, may dispose of any or all of his or her property by will.

Kansas puts no number in that sentence, which sends the reader to a second chapter. K.S.A. 38-101 sets the period of minority at 18 years, with one exception: a person aged 16 or over who is or has been married counts as being of the age of majority in matters of contracts, property rights, liabilities and the capacity to sue and be sued. A district court can also confer the rights of majority on a minor over contracts and real and personal property under K.S.A. 38-108, on a petition heard under K.S.A. 38-109.

So the working answer is 18, with two statutory routes that can arrive early. Anyone drafting for a testator under 18 should have a Kansas attorney confirm which route applies before the document is signed, because the will stands or falls on it.

What Makes a Kansas Will Valid

K.S.A. 59-606 carries the execution rule, the self-proving procedure and the affidavit form in a single section. The execution half comes down to three requirements:

  1. In writing. Every will other than an oral will under K.S.A. 59-608 must be written.
  2. Signed at the end by the party making the will, or by some other person in the testator's presence and by the testator's express direction.
  3. Attested and subscribed in the testator's presence by two or more competent witnesses, each of whom saw the testator sign or heard the testator acknowledge the will.

Four details separate Kansas from the states people move here from.

The signature belongs at the end. Kansas asks for a will "signed at the end", and the Kansas courts have read that literally. The revisor's own case annotations to Section 59-606 record In re Estate of Bond, 159 Kan. 249, holding that a signature in the body of the will is not enough, and In re Estate of Leavey, 41 Kan. App. 2d 423, holding that a witness who initialed the bottom corner of every page did not meet the attestation and subscription requirement. Initials are not a signature and the last page is where the names go.

The testator does not have to sign in front of anyone. The statute gives the witnesses two ways in. They may watch the signature happen, or they may hear the testator acknowledge a will already signed. Either satisfies Section 59-606, so a will signed alone in the morning can be witnessed properly that afternoon, as long as the testator acknowledges it to both witnesses.

The witnesses do have to sign in front of the testator. That direction is not optional. The attestation and subscription happen "in the presence of such party", which keeps the testator in the room while the witnesses put their names down. A signing where the witnesses take the document away and return it signed has not met the section, and being nearby is not the same as being present: the revisor annotates Section 59-606 with In re Estate of Weber, 192 Kan. 258, where proximity between the witnesses and the testator was not enough to establish presence and the will was not authorized for probate.

Nobody has to say what the document is. This one is a requirement Kansas leaves out, and it is worth naming because a neighboring state imposes it. The revisor's annotation to In re Estate of Koellen, 162 Kan. 395, records that a will need not be published and that the witnesses need not know the instrument is a will. Oklahoma makes that declaration a condition of a valid signing. Kansas does not, so a Kansas witness who signed without reading a word still attested properly.

Kansas writes no harmless-error rescue into Article 6. There is no provision letting a court admit a document that misses a step on clear evidence of intent, so treat the three requirements as a checklist where every box matters.

Who May Witness, and What a Gift to a Witness Costs

Competency is measured at the moment of attestation. K.S.A. 59-607 says that a witness who was competent when attesting keeps the will provable even if that witness later becomes incompetent.

The trap is K.S.A. 59-604. A beneficial devise or bequest made in a will to a subscribing witness is void, unless there are two other competent subscribing witnesses who are not beneficiaries under the will. Read the exception carefully, because it does more work than most summaries admit: the two rescuing witnesses must be both competent and non-beneficiaries, so a will signed by three witnesses who all take something saves nobody.

Two things follow that are worth stating plainly.

  • The will survives. Section 59-604 voids the gift, not the document. A Kansas will witnessed by a beneficiary is still a valid will, which is why the common phrasing that Kansas witnesses "must be disinterested" overstates the rule.
  • A family witness is not wiped out. If the witness would have been entitled to a share of the estate without a will, so much of that intestate share as does not exceed the value of the voided gift passes to the witness out of the void gift itself. The statute treats that share as a legacy or devise under K.S.A. 59-1405. A daughter who witnesses her father's will keeps something, capped at what intestacy would have handed her.

Both problems disappear if the two witnesses take nothing under the will.

A Will That Pays Its Own Drafter

K.S.A. 59-605 is a Kansas rule with no counterpart in many neighboring codes, and it reaches the person who typed the document. Any provision in a will written or prepared for another person that gives a devise or bequest to the writer or preparer, or to that person's parent, children, issue, sibling or spouse, is invalid. Two exceptions save it:

  • the writer or preparer is related to the testator by blood, marriage or adoption, and the gift is no larger than what that person would have received under the intestacy rules; or
  • it affirmatively appears that the testator had read or knew the contents of the will and had independent legal advice about it.

The section defines "children" and "issue" by reference to K.S.A. 59-501. The practical reach is wide, because the writer or preparer need not be a lawyer. A son who types his mother's will on her laptop and leaves himself more than an intestate share has walked into Section 59-605, and the fix is independent counsel for the testator before signing.

Kansas Does Not Accept Handwritten Wills

Kansas has no holographic will statute. Chapter 59 was read section by section on 2026-09-08 and its index of 854 sections contains no holographic will provision, so there is no category for an unwitnessed handwritten document to fall into. K.S.A. 59-606 governs instead, and it wants two competent witnesses whether the text is typed, printed or written out longhand.

A page in the testator's own handwriting, signed and dated and kept in a safe, passes nothing in Kansas. The estate goes through the Kansas intestacy rules as though the page did not exist. Handwriting the document is fine. Skipping the witnesses is not.

One narrow exception lets handwriting do real work, and it is not a will. K.S.A. 59-623 lets a Kansas will refer to a separate written statement or list disposing of items of tangible personal property the will does not itself dispose of by name, other than money, evidences of debt, documents of title, securities, and properties used in trade or business. The list must either be in the testator's handwriting or be signed by the testator, and it must describe the items with reasonable certainty. It may be written before or after the will, may be altered afterward, and may be referred to as a document that will exist at death. That is the clean way to handle the jewelry and the furniture without redrafting the will each time someone changes their mind.

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Self-Proved Kansas Wills

K.S.A. 59-606 offers self-proving in the same section as execution, and Kansas is unusually generous about the timing. A will may be made self-proved "at the time of its execution or at any subsequent date during the lifetimes of the testator and the witnesses". A will signed in 2005 without an affidavit can still be made self-proved today, provided the testator and the witnesses are all living and willing.

The mechanics are fixed. The testator acknowledges the will and the testator and the attesting witnesses swear affidavits, all before an officer authorized to take acknowledgments to deeds of conveyance and to administer oaths. The officer attaches or annexes a certificate under official seal, in the form printed in the section, and that certificate is what makes the will self-proved. A codicil can be self-proved the same way, and so can a spouse's consent to take under the will.

The statute then offers a shortcut that saves a line of signatures. If an affidavit conforming in substance to the printed form is executed at the time the will is executed, no other signatures of the witnesses and no separate attestation clause are required. The affidavit does both jobs at once.

The payoff arrives at the courthouse. Under K.S.A. 59-606 a self-proved will is admitted to probate without the testimony of any subscribing witness unless it is contested. Without self-proving, K.S.A. 59-2224 requires the testimony of at least two of the subscribing witnesses at the probate hearing, taken in person, by affidavit or by deposition, and the court may waive that only on a proper showing that the witnesses are unavailable or cannot be located. Years later, one witness has moved and the other has died, and the affidavit signed at the kitchen table is what spares the family that hunt.

Self-proving is optional and changes nothing else. Section 59-606 says a self-proved will is "treated no differently" than one that is not, and it may be contested, revoked or amended by codicil in the same way.

Kansas Has No Electronic Wills Act

Kansas has not enacted the Uniform Electronic Wills Act or any local equivalent. Three checks settle it, and they point the same direction.

Chapter 59 contains no electronic wills article. The revisor's chapter index lists 854 sections, of which 243 are marked repealed, and the only two catchlines mentioning electronic signatures are K.S.A. 59-30,210 and 59-30,272. Both carry the same text relating the 2025 guardianship and conservatorship acts to the federal electronic signatures in global and national commerce act, both were enacted by L. 2025, ch. 40, and both took effect January 1, 2026. Neither touches wills. There is no enactment date and no effective date to report for a Kansas electronic will, because there is no act to date.

The Kansas uniform electronic transactions act then excludes wills by name. K.S.A. 16-1603(b)(1) states that the act does not apply to a transaction to the extent it is governed by a law governing the creation and execution of wills, codicils or testamentary trusts. That carve-out has been in the Kansas act since it was adopted in 2000, and it survived the 2007 amendment that took effect July 1, 2008. Kansas treats an electronic signature as valid for most documents and declines to extend that treatment to a will.

Two dates matter for a rule this likely to change. The revisor's published statutes carry the 2025 session, and the 2026 session was read separately for this page: all 157 enacted chapters of the 2026 Kansas session laws were searched on 2026-09-08, and none contains the phrase "electronic will" or amends K.S.A. 59-601, 59-606 or 59-608. The Secretary of State's 2023 through 2026 amended-and-repealed indexes show no amendment to any section of Article 6 of Chapter 59 except K.S.A. 59-618a, amended in 2023.

The reader-facing consequence is short. You can draft a Kansas will online, and plenty of people do. You cannot execute one electronically, and no Kansas statute lets witnesses attend by video. Print it, sign at the end, and have two competent witnesses subscribe in the room with you. Electronic wills law moves fast in other states, so treat this section as dated: it reflects the Kansas statutes and session laws as published on 2026-09-08.

Oral Wills Are Still Live in Kansas, Within Limits

Kansas keeps the nuncupative will, and unlike many states it has not narrowed the section to soldiers and sailors. K.S.A. 59-608 makes an oral will made in the last sickness valid as to personal property when three conditions are met:

  • the testator called upon some person present when the testamentary words were spoken to bear testimony that this was his or her will;
  • the words are reduced to writing and subscribed by two competent, disinterested witnesses; and
  • that writing happens within thirty days after the testamentary words were spoken.

Note how different the witness rule is here. Section 59-604 lets an interested witness attest a written will and merely voids the gift, while Section 59-608 requires the two witnesses to an oral will to be disinterested from the start.

Two limits keep the section rare. It reaches personal property only, so no land passes by an oral will in Kansas. And K.S.A. 59-619 closes the door quickly: no oral will of a Kansas resident is admitted to probate unless an application is made within six months after the death, apart from the routes in K.S.A. 59-2229 and 59-2230 for wills already probated elsewhere.

Nobody should plan around Section 59-608. It exists for the deathbed, and the thirty-day writing requirement means the family has to act while grieving.

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A Will Signed in Another State

K.S.A. 59-609 accepts a will executed outside Kansas if it was executed in the manner prescribed by the Kansas probate code, or by the law of the place where it was executed, or by the law of the testator's residence either when it was executed or at death. Three chances, and any one of them is enough.

The section closes with a proviso that people miss, and it is a floor no foreign will gets under: the will must be in writing and subscribed by the testator. A state that recognizes an unsigned or purely oral instrument cannot carry that document into Kansas through Section 59-609. Kansas will apply another state's witnessing rules and will not waive the writing or the signature.

A will signed in Omaha under Nebraska law does not need re-signing after a move to Wichita. Have a Kansas attorney read it anyway, because the property rules around the will, from the elective share to the homestead, change at the state line, and because the Kansas revocation rule below can undo the document without anyone touching it.

Marriage Plus a Child Revokes the Whole Will

This is the Kansas fact that most pages get half right. K.S.A. 59-610 holds two rules of very different size.

Marriage and a child together revoke the entire will. If after making a will the testator marries and has a child, by birth or adoption, the will is revoked. Not the provisions about the new spouse, and not the provisions about the new child. The whole document falls, and the estate passes under the intestacy statutes unless a new will is signed. Both events are needed, so marrying alone changes nothing and a child born to an unmarried testator changes nothing.

Divorce revokes only the ex-spouse's provisions. If the testator is divorced after making the will, all provisions in favor of the divorced spouse are revoked, and the rest of the will stands.

The second rule appears on nearly every competing page. The first, which can void an entire estate plan, is the one that goes missing. Anyone who marries and then has or adopts a child should sign a new will, and remarriage plus a late-in-life adoption catches people who assume their old document is intact.

Outside Section 59-610, K.S.A. 59-611 lists the only ways a written Kansas will can be revoked or altered:

  • by another will in writing;
  • by another writing of the testator declaring the revocation or alteration and executed with the same formalities the will itself required, meaning signed at the end and attested by two competent witnesses; or
  • by burning, tearing, canceling, obliterating or destroying the will with the intent and for the purpose of revoking it, done by the testator or by another person in the testator's presence and at the testator's direction.

Tearing up the second will does not bring the first one back. K.S.A. 59-612 keeps the earlier will dead unless the terms of the revocation show the testator meant to revive it, or the testator republishes the first will in the presence of two or more competent witnesses who subscribe it in the testator's presence. Sign a new will instead.

What a Kansas Will Carries Without Redrafting

Four short sections answer the questions people ask when they wonder whether an older will still works.

  • Property bought after signing still passes. K.S.A. 59-613 sends all property acquired after the will was made through the will as if the testator had owned it that day, unless a different intention appears from the will. A new house does not require a new will for that reason alone.
  • A devise of land passes the whole interest. K.S.A. 59-614 passes all of the testator's estate in devised real estate unless the will clearly shows a smaller estate was intended.
  • A beneficiary who dies first may be replaced by their issue. K.S.A. 59-615 sends a gift to a spouse, or to a relative by lineal descent or within the sixth degree by blood or adoption, down to that person's surviving issue if the beneficiary dies before the testator, unless the will makes a different disposition. For wills executed on or after July 1, 1973, "issue" means offspring, progeny or lineal descendants, by blood or adoption, in whatever degree.
  • A separate list handles the household items. K.S.A. 59-623, covered above.

One Kansas limit belongs here too, because it can void a gift the testator cared about. K.S.A. 59-602 prohibits and voids a devise of Kansas real estate, and a bequest of personal property by a Kansas resident, that takes effect at death in favor of a foreign country, a subdivision or city of one, a body politic or a corporation located there or existing under its laws, or a trustee or agent for any of them. Gifts to institutions created and existing exclusively for religious, educational or charitable purposes are excepted. A bequest to an overseas relative is unaffected; a bequest to an overseas company or municipality is the one to run past a Kansas attorney.

The Six-Month Clock, and Who Has to Hand the Will Over

Kansas puts a hard outer limit on the document itself, and it is shorter than most states.

K.S.A. 59-617 provides that no will of a testator who died a Kansas resident is effectual to pass property unless a petition for probate is filed within six months after the death. Miss it and the will stops working, whatever it says.

K.S.A. 59-618a is the valve that saves an estate nobody was ready to open. Any person possessing a decedent's will may file the will, or a copy of it, with the district court of the county of the decedent's last residence, along with an affidavit giving the decedent's name, residence address and date and place of death, the names, addresses and relationships of every heir, legatee and devisee known after a diligent search, the name and address of any trustee under the will, a statement that the filing is to preserve the will in case probate is later required, and confirmation that a copy of the affidavit and will went to each heir, legatee and devisee named. Since July 1, 2023 the affidavit must also state whether the original or a copy is being filed. A will filed that way inside the six-month window may be admitted to probate after the window closes.

Two more sections put a cost on sitting on the document.

  • K.S.A. 59-621 requires the person having custody of the will to deliver it to the court with jurisdiction after the testator's death. Anyone who willfully neglects or refuses to deliver a will after being duly ordered to do so is guilty of contempt of court, and is also liable to any aggrieved party for the damages that neglect or refusal causes.
  • K.S.A. 59-618 reaches the person who knowingly withholds a will for more than six months after the death, whether that person holds it or merely knows of it and has access for the purpose of probate. That person is liable for reasonable attorney fees, costs and all damages sustained by beneficiaries who lacked possession, knowledge and access. Those beneficiaries can still petition for probate within 90 days after learning of the will and gaining access, though the title of a good-faith purchaser without knowledge of the will is protected once six months have run from the death.

Kansas answers a withheld will with contempt of court and civil liability. A scan of all 854 catchlines in Chapter 59 on 2026-09-08 turned up no section making it a separate crime, which is worth knowing before anyone repeats a criminal warning borrowed from another state.

Opposition to a will happens inside the probate hearing rather than in a separate lawsuit. K.S.A. 59-2224 lets any heir, devisee or legatee prosecute or oppose the probate of a will at that hearing. The grounds and the windows are set out in challenging a Kansas will.

Signing a Kansas Will That Holds Up

A compliant Kansas signing looks like this:

  1. Confirm the testator is of sound mind and possesses the rights of majority under K.S.A. 59-601.
  2. Put the will in writing and have the testator sign at the end, on the last page, with a full signature rather than initials.
  3. Bring in two competent adults who take nothing under the will and who are not related to whoever prepared it.
  4. Have the testator either sign in front of both witnesses or acknowledge the signature to both of them.
  5. Have both witnesses attest and subscribe while the testator is present.
  6. Add the self-proving acknowledgment and affidavits under K.S.A. 59-606 before an officer authorized to take acknowledgments, so nobody hunts for witnesses at the probate hearing.
  7. Sign a new will after a marriage followed by the birth or adoption of a child, because Section 59-610 has already revoked the old one.

A will governs what happens after a death and nothing before it, and it is one document among several. The rest of a Kansas estate plan covers the lifetime documents and the assets that pass outside the will entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many witnesses does a Kansas will need?

Two. K.S.A. 59-606 requires every written will to be attested and subscribed in the testator's presence by two or more competent witnesses, and each of those witnesses must either have seen the testator sign or have heard the testator acknowledge the will. Kansas sets no upper limit, so a third witness is allowed.

Does a Kansas will have to be notarized?

No. K.S.A. 59-606 asks for writing, a signature at the end and two competent witnesses, and it never asks for a notary. An officer authorized to take acknowledgments enters only through the optional self-proving affidavit. A notarized Kansas will with no witnesses is not valid.

Is a handwritten will valid in Kansas?

Only if two competent witnesses attested and subscribed it. Kansas has no holographic will statute, so handwriting buys the document nothing. An unwitnessed page in the testator's own hand fails K.S.A. 59-606, and the estate passes under the intestacy rules instead.

Does Kansas accept electronic wills?

No. Kansas has not enacted an electronic wills act, and the Kansas uniform electronic transactions act carves wills out by name: K.S.A. 16-1603(b)(1) says the act does not apply to a transaction governed by a law on the creation and execution of wills, codicils or testamentary trusts. Remote video witnessing has no statutory footing in Kansas.

Can a witness inherit under a Kansas will?

Rarely, and the gift is what fails rather than the will. Under K.S.A. 59-604 a beneficial devise or bequest to a subscribing witness is void unless two other competent subscribing witnesses signed and take nothing under the will. A witness who would have inherited without a will still takes up to the value of the voided gift out of it.

Does getting married revoke a Kansas will?

Marriage alone does not. K.S.A. 59-610 revokes the entire will when the testator marries and has a child by birth or adoption after making it. Both events are needed. A divorce after the will is signed revokes only the provisions in favor of the divorced spouse, and the rest of the will stands.

How long does someone have to file a Kansas will after a death?

Six months. Under K.S.A. 59-617 a will of a Kansas resident does not pass property unless a petition for probate is filed within six months of the death. K.S.A. 59-618a leaves one valve open: a will or a copy filed with the district court inside that six-month window, with the required affidavit, may be admitted to probate later.

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Information current as of September 8, 2026

Settled Estate is not a law firm, and this content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Probate laws and procedures in Kansas can change. Consult with a qualified attorney for advice specific to your situation. Full disclaimer.

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