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Rhode Island Estate Planning Basics
Pillar GuideRhode Island17 min read

Rhode Island Estate Planning Basics

Rhode Island estate planning runs on four documents. Marriage revokes an older will, a power of attorney needs durability wording, and health care takes two.

By Settled Editorial

A Rhode Island estate plan rests on four signed documents plus two things you never sign in a lawyer's office. The four are a will under R.I. Gen. Laws § 33-5-5, a durable power of attorney carrying the wording § 34-22-6.1 asks for, a durable power of attorney for health care under chapter 23-4.10, and a declaration under chapter 23-4.11. The two are your beneficiary forms and the words printed on your deed.

Three Rhode Island rules break advice written for a neighboring state. Marriage revokes a will you signed before the wedding. A power of attorney stops working the moment you lose capacity unless it says otherwise in so many words. Rhode Island wrote no default surrogate list, so a spouse holding no health care document holds no medical authority either.

Treat this page as a planning map and confirm anything touching your own family with a licensed Rhode Island attorney. After a death the file opens in the Probate Court of the city or town where the person lived, under § 8-9-9, which is the subject of the Rhode Island probate guide rather than this one.

The Four Documents at a Glance

DocumentRhode Island authoritySigning ruleWhat it decides
Will§ 33-5-5Two witnesses present at the same timeWho inherits probate property, who serves as executor, who raises your children
Durable power of attorney§ 34-22-6.1 and § 18-16-2Acknowledged before a notary, no witnesses requiredWho handles your money and property while you are alive
Durable power of attorney for health care§ 23-4.10-2One notary public or two qualified witnessesWho speaks to your doctors
Declaration, the living will§ 23-4.11-3Two subscribing witnesses not related to you by blood or marriageWhether life sustaining procedures continue in a terminal condition

No two rows sign the same way. A signing appointment that treats the four papers as one packet gets at least one of them wrong, and the witness bars differ enough that the same friend cannot always sit for both health care documents.

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Document One: The Will

Rhode Island keeps will execution short. Section 33-5-2 opens the door to every person of sane mind who is eighteen years or older. Section 33-5-5 then supplies the whole ceremony: the will must be in writing and signed by the testator, or by someone else in the testator's presence and at the testator's express direction, and that signature must be made or acknowledged in front of two or more witnesses present at the same time, who then attest and subscribe in the testator's presence.

Read three things out of that sentence.

  1. Both witnesses watch together. Rhode Island asks for two witnesses "present at the same time," so a will carried from desk to desk for signatures fails the test.
  2. No notary is required. The section never mentions one, and it closes by saying "no form of attestation shall be necessary, and no other publication shall be necessary."
  3. Someone may sign for you. A person who cannot hold a pen can direct another person to sign in their presence.

Your will also names the guardian for minor children. Section 33-5-4 lets you nominate one and directs the probate court to appoint the person you named "unless good cause be shown to the contrary," with a surviving parent who is otherwise qualified taking priority. Section 33-15.1-7 repeats the power in the guardianship of minors chapter. The full picture, including guardianship of an adult with a disability, sits in the Rhode Island guardianship planning guide, and the drafting mechanics are covered in the Rhode Island will requirements guide.

Revoking a will is equally spare. Section 33-5-10 allows a later will or codicil executed the same way, a signed writing declaring the intent to revoke and executed the same way, or burning, tearing or otherwise destroying the document with the intent to revoke.

Marriage and Divorce Rewrite a Rhode Island Will Without Asking

Here is the Rhode Island rule most planning articles skip, and it costs families real money.

Section 33-5-9 says the marriage of a person "shall act as a revocation of a will made by him or her previous to the marriage," and spares the document only where it appears from the will that it was made in contemplation of that marriage. One narrow exception survives, and it applies only where the will exercises a power of appointment over property that would not otherwise pass to the same people. Everything else falls.

So a Rhode Island resident who signed a will at thirty, married at thirty-four and never signed again has no will. The estate runs under the rules of descent instead, where § 33-1-5 gives a surviving spouse a life estate in the real property rather than outright ownership. The Rhode Island intestate succession guide walks through the rest of that ladder.

Divorce cuts the other way and cuts automatically. Section 33-5-9.1 provides that the entry of a final judgment of divorce revokes every provision for the benefit of the former spouse, unless the will shows it was made in contemplation of the divorce, and the rest of the will then takes effect "as though the former spouse had predeceased." The trigger is the final judgment. A filed case that has not reached judgment changes nothing, which is why a separation is a signal to sign new papers rather than wait.

Sign a new will after any wedding, any final divorce decree, any birth or adoption, and any move into or out of Rhode Island.

Document Two: The Durable Power of Attorney

Rhode Island never adopted the Uniform Power of Attorney Act. Two chapters do the work instead, and neither one behaves the way a national form assumes.

Section 34-22-6.1 carries durability. Subsection (a) keeps an agent's authority alive through the donor's later incompetency only where the writing "contains the words 'This power of attorney shall not be affected by the incompetency of the donor', or 'This power of attorney shall become effective upon the incompetency of the donor', or similar words showing the intent of the donor." Silence loses. Copy one of the two printed sentences and the argument never starts.

Chapter 18-16, the Rhode Island Short Form Power of Attorney Act, supplies the optional statutory form at § 18-16-2, whose subsection (b) requires the principal's acknowledgment "in the manner prescribed for the acknowledgement of a conveyance of real property." Witnesses appear nowhere in either chapter, so the Rhode Island count is a notary and zero witnesses. A form carried in from Connecticut or Massachusetts brings witness lines this state never asked for.

One clause belongs in the document even though the statutory form leaves it out. Section 33-27.1-9, part of the Rhode Island Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, releases the content of your emails and messages to an agent only where the power of attorney "expressly grants" that authority. Ask for the express grant while you are drafting, since the Rhode Island digital assets guide shows how thin the fallback is. Everything else about agent selection sits in the Rhode Island power of attorney guide.

Documents Three and Four: Health Care Takes Two Papers

Rhode Island split the advance directive across two chapters and never merged them.

Chapter 23-4.10 holds the durable power of attorney for health care, which names an agent. Its statutory form at § 23-4.10-2 states in capital letters that the document is not valid unless signed by one notary public or two qualified witnesses present when you sign or acknowledge your signature. The form disqualifies your agent, your alternates, health care providers and their employees, and community care facility operators and their employees.

Chapter 23-4.11, the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, holds the declaration that most people call a living will. Section 23-4.11-3(a) requires a competent adult's signature "in the presence of two (2) subscribing witnesses who are not related to the declarant by blood or marriage." No notary option exists here, and the bar runs on family rather than occupation. A friend outside health care clears both documents.

Now the reason to sign both this month. Rhode Island enacted no default surrogate statute, so no spouse, adult child or parent inherits medical authority by relationship. A family without paperwork has to petition for guardianship in the Probate Court of the city or town where the person lives. The Rhode Island advance directive guide covers the witness bars, the pregnancy suspension in both chapters, and the tie-breaker at § 23-4.11-4 that gives the later signed document control.

The Trust Question

Rhode Island does not run its trust law out of a Uniform Trust Code. Title 18 of the General Laws is titled Fiduciaries, and its chapter list moves from chapter 18-1, Application of Laws to Trusts, through powers of fiduciaries, accounting, spendthrift trusts, qualified dispositions, the Rhode Island Uniform Custodial Trust Act, the Uniform Testamentary Additions to Trusts Act and the Rhode Island Uniform Prudent Investor Act. A national article citing "the state trust code" is citing something Rhode Island never passed.

Two Rhode Island facts decide whether a revocable trust earns its fee.

The house has no shortcut. Rhode Island publishes no transfer-on-death deed for real estate. The transfer-on-death statute the state does have, chapter 7-11.1, reaches securities and security accounts only. A Rhode Island house that must skip Probate Court needs a funded revocable trust or a lifetime deed, both of which the guide to avoiding probate in Rhode Island lays out side by side.

A pour-over will works, and the statute says so. Section 18-14-2 lets a will devise property to the trustee of a trust identified in the will, adds that the gift is not invalid because the trust is amendable or revocable, and sends the property into the trust rather than into a testamentary trust. Subsection (d) carries the warning worth remembering: revoking the trust before you die makes the gift lapse.

Funding is the step that fails. A trust signed and never retitled owns nothing, and the estate runs through Probate Court anyway. Deeds, account registrations and business interests each need their own transfer. The Rhode Island revocable living trust guide works through the funding list.

Title and Beneficiary Forms Outrank Your Will

Your will governs probate property. These five channels move assets before a will is ever read.

  • Joint deposits. Section 19-9-14 lets a bank or credit union pay an account held by two people and payable to either or the survivor to either one, "whether the other is living or not."
  • In-trust-for accounts. Section 19-9-12 pays a deposit made by one person in trust for another to the named person on the depositor's death, so long as the name and residence were disclosed and no other written terms were filed.
  • Securities in beneficiary form. Chapter 7-11.1, the Uniform Transfer on Death Security Registration Act, moves a registered security to the named beneficiary, and § 7-11.1-10 makes that transfer nontestamentary.
  • Retirement plans and life insurance. These pay the person on the carrier's form. No Rhode Island statute rewrites that form after a divorce or a falling out.
  • The words on your deed. Section 34-3-1 deems every conveyance to two or more people, "whether they be husband and wife or otherwise," a tenancy in common and not a joint tenancy, unless the deed declares the tenancy joint, runs to those persons and the survivor of them, or manifestly shows that intent.

That last one traps married couples more than any other Rhode Island rule. Pull your deed out of the folder, read the granting clause, and if the survivorship words are missing, treat the house as an estate asset until a Rhode Island attorney tells you otherwise.

Two Add-Ons and One Number to Watch

A trust for an animal is a real Rhode Island instrument, and it lives somewhere nobody looks. Section 4-23-1 sits in Title 4, Animals and Animal Husbandry, and it allows a trust for the care of an animal alive during the settlor's lifetime, terminating on the death of the last surviving animal. It names who may enforce the trust and ranks where leftover money goes. The Rhode Island pet trust guide covers the drafting choices.

Then there is the state estate tax, which reaches far more Rhode Island households than the federal one. Section 44-22-1.1(a)(4) sets a Rhode Island credit of $64,400 and indexes it every January 1 to the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, so the statute prints a mechanism rather than a year figure. The Division of Taxation publishes the resulting number: for a death on or after January 1, 2026, a gross estate above $1,838,056 crosses the line, up from $1,802,431 in 2025. Every decedent dying on or after January 1, 2015 files Form RI-706 whether tax is owed or not. Own a Rhode Island house, a retirement account and a life policy and you can pass that threshold without feeling wealthy. The Rhode Island estate tax guide carries the filing mechanics.

A Rhode Island Planning Checklist

Work the list in order. Each step takes an afternoon, and the first two cost nothing.

  1. Pull your deed and read the granting clause for survivorship words under § 34-3-1.
  2. Log in to each retirement account, life policy and bank account and read the beneficiary line out loud.
  3. List the people: executor, alternate executor, financial agent, health care agent, guardian for minor children, and a backup for each.
  4. Sign the will in front of two witnesses who are in the room together.
  5. Sign the durable power of attorney in front of a notary, and confirm the incompetency sentence is printed in it.
  6. Sign both health care documents, watching that the health care agent form uses a notary or two qualified witnesses and the declaration uses two witnesses unrelated by blood or marriage.
  7. Decide the trust question against what you own, then fund whatever you sign.
  8. Tell your agents where the originals live, and hand your health care agent a copy.
  9. Re-read the whole set after any marriage, divorce, birth, death, move or sale.

When to Bring in a Rhode Island Attorney

Talk with a licensed Rhode Island attorney when:

  • You married, divorced or remarried after signing your last will, since §§ 33-5-9 and 33-5-9.1 already changed it
  • You own Rhode Island real estate and want it out of Probate Court, since this state offers no transfer-on-death deed
  • Your gross estate could approach the Rhode Island filing threshold
  • You own property in another state, a business interest, or an out-of-state trust
  • A child or a beneficiary has a disability, receives benefits, or cannot manage money
  • You want to leave someone out, since a surviving spouse has rights under chapter 33-28 that the surviving spouse rights guide explains
  • You downloaded a form and cannot find the durability sentence in it

This Rhode Island estate planning guide is general information about Rhode Island law and is current as of the dates shown above. Confirm anything that affects your own family with a licensed Rhode Island attorney before you sign, because these documents move real money and real property.

Sources:

It is not legal advice.

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Settled Estate is not a law firm and does not give legal advice.

Information current as of August 2, 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 Rhode Island can change. Consult with a qualified attorney for advice specific to your situation. Full disclaimer.

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