Florida Online Wills: A Florida Probate Lawyer’s Guide

Yes — online wills are legal in Florida, and have been since 1 July 2020, when the Florida Electronic Wills Act took effect. That is the easy part, and it is where most articles on the subject stop.

The hard part is that an online will in Florida can mean two entirely different documents. One is a genuine Florida electronic will under section 732.522 — signed with an electronic signature, witnessed by people appearing on video, supervised by a Florida online notary public, never printed, and held afterwards by a qualified custodian. The other is a form you download and print, judged by the same statute that has governed paper wills here for decades. Which one you bought decides almost everything that happens next.

So the difficulty is not whether Florida online wills are legal. It is what happens to the file afterwards, who is allowed to hold it, and a video recording most people never learn exists until a probate lawyer asks for it. This page walks the whole of it — execution, custody, revocation, cost, and the specific circumstances in which a will bought online will fail no matter how carefully you filled it in.

A will is one document in a larger set. If you want the whole plan handled remotely — will or trust, durable power of attorney, health care surrogate and living will — see my guide to online estate planning in Florida.

---

Are online wills legal in Florida?

Yes. Online wills are legal in Florida, and have been since 1 July 2020. But “online will” describes two completely different documents with two completely different sets of rules, and mixing them up is the most common expensive mistake in this subject.

The two things people mean by “online will”

The first is a form you download, fill in, and print. That is not an electronic will. It is an ordinary paper will, and it lives or dies by § 732.502 — the same statute that has governed Florida wills for decades.

You must sign at the end of the document, in the presence of two attesting witnesses, and those witnesses must sign in the presence of you and of each other. All three signatures, one occasion, everyone watching.

That last requirement is what kills most homemade wills. The paper came from a website; the law that judges it did not.

The second is a genuine electronic will under § 732.522 — a document signed electronically, never printed, witnessed by people who are not in the room, supervised by a Florida online notary, and afterwards held by a qualified custodian. So yes: you can make a will entirely online in Florida without printing anything and without visiting a notary in person. Every national service advertising a “Florida online will” should be read carefully to see which of these two it actually delivers. Most deliver the first.

The same two documents get called other things — internet wills, digital wills, e-wills, virtual wills, online last will and testament. None of those terms means anything in Florida law. Only one distinction matters: printed and signed in front of two physically present witnesses under § 732.502, or signed electronically and never printed under § 732.522. Everything else is marketing vocabulary.

Who may serve as a witness: Florida’s witness requirements

Section 732.504 is short and generous: any person competent to be a witness may witness a will, and a will is not invalid because it was signed by an interested witness — someone who takes under it.

Generous is not the same as wise. Nothing in the statute disqualifies a beneficiary from witnessing, and doing it hands a future challenger an undue-influence narrative for free. Use two witnesses who take nothing.

Two further limits apply to the online route. A principal may not act as a witness to his or her own signature — § 117.265(2). And a witness appearing remotely must be inside the United States, which is covered below.

Handwritten wills, holographic wills, and spoken wills

A handwritten will is valid in Florida if it was signed at the end in front of two witnesses who signed in your presence and in each other’s. A holographic will — handwritten and signed without witnesses — is void here, even if the state or country where it was written would honour it.

The distinction is drawn in the statute itself. § 732.502(2) provides that “any will, other than a holographic or nuncupative will, executed by a nonresident of Florida… is valid as a will in this state if valid under the laws of the state or country where the will was executed” — expressly excluding holographic and nuncupative (spoken) wills from that rescue. The same subsection then adds that “a will in the testator’s handwriting that has been executed in accordance with subsection (1) shall not be considered a holographic will.” Handwriting is not the problem. Missing witnesses are.

Florida courts have applied this strictly, and recently:

• Zaidman v. Zaidman, 305 So. 3d 330 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020) — a foreign holographic will that did not strictly comply with Florida’s testamentary statutes was invalid in Florida.
• Caveglia v. Heinen, 359 So. 3d 745 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023) — Florida law at the date of a Florida-domiciled decedent’s death governs, and a holographic will executed while the testator lived in Louisiana could not be probated in Florida or even operate as a document revoking an earlier will.

That second holding is the one people do not see coming. A document that cannot be admitted also cannot undo the will that came before it.

---

Does a Florida will have to be notarized?

No — not to be valid. § 732.502 requires your signature and two witnesses, and nothing else. Notarization does one job: it makes the will self-proved under § 732.503, so nobody has to find your witnesses years later. An electronic will is the exception, because there the notary is what makes remote witnessing lawful in the first place.

This is the single most common misunderstanding in Florida estate planning, and it runs in both directions. People believe an unnotarized will is worthless — it is not. And people believe a notarized will is therefore a good will — it may not be, if the notary took an acknowledgment without anybody signing on a witness line.

The § 732.503 affidavit form itself was updated to accommodate the online route. It now carries checkboxes recording whether the testator and each witness appeared “by means of physical presence or online notarization.” A form printed before mid-2021 will not have them.

Who can notarize a will in Florida? Any Florida notary public may take a self-proving affidavit on a paper will. Only an online notary public — separately registered with the Department of State under § 117.225 and Fla. Admin. Code R. 1N-7.001 — may supervise the remote witnessing of an electronic will. Being a Florida notary is not enough; being an out-of-state notary who performs remote notarizations in that state is not enough either.

---

What Florida law requires for a valid electronic will

§ 732.522(2) sets four conditions, and all four have to hold before witnesses appearing on video count as being “in the presence of” one another.

1. The individuals are supervised by a notary public in accordance with § 117.285.
2. The individuals are authenticated and signing as part of an online notarization session in accordance with § 117.265.
3. The witness hears the signer make a statement acknowledging that the signer has signed the electronic record. Not sees. Hears, and hears an affirmative statement.
4. The signing and witnessing comply with § 117.285 — which is where the screening questions live, and which is covered in full below.

§ 732.522(1) does the other half of the work: any requirement that an instrument be signed is satisfied by an electronic signature. And § 732.521(3) defines that signature narrowly — “an electronic mark visibly manifested in a record as a signature and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.”

Which answers a question people ask more often than you would think: a video of you explaining what you want is not a will. Neither is a voice memo, a text message, or a note in your phone. § 732.522(3) sends everything back to § 732.502, and § 732.502(1) requires a writing.

Why electronic wills needed their own statute

Florida adopted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act in 2000, and it is why you can e-sign a lease, a loan or a listing agreement. It has never applied to wills. Section 668.50(3)(b)1 puts “a provision of law governing the creation and execution of wills, codicils, or testamentary trusts” outside the whole of UETA.

So the Legislature had to build a separate, narrower authorization from scratch. That is what §§ 732.521–732.526 are. It also explains why the electronic will carries obligations no other e-signed document does — a supervising notary, a recording, a custodian, a bond. Signing a will online is not like signing anything else online, and the statute is built on the premise that it should not be.

Where everyone has to be

The notary must be physically in Florida. You may be anywhere in the world. Your witnesses must be inside the United States. Those are three different rules in three different statutes, and the third one surprises almost everybody.

Read the second and third rows together, because that is where the trap is. You can sign a Florida will from Madrid. Your brother in Madrid cannot witness it. The testator’s location is unrestricted; the remote witness’s location is not.

§ 117.209(4) then settles the choice-of-law question cleanly: the validity of an online notarization performed by a Florida-registered online notary is determined by Florida law regardless of where the principal or the witnesses were. § 117.285(8) says the same about the witnessing itself, and gives Florida courts subject-matter jurisdiction over any dispute arising from it, including the power to subpoena the records and the witnesses.

What actually happens in the signing session

Nobody describes this, so people arrive expecting a video call and find something closer to a bank onboarding.

Identity first. Unless the notary personally knows you, § 117.265(4)(b) requires all three of the following, and the statute is emphatic that all three must succeed:

• Remote presentation of a government-issued identification credential.
• Credential analysis of that credential — software checking the document’s security features.
• Identity proofing, usually knowledge-based authentication.

If any of the three fails, or the databases consulted do not hold enough information about you to run the check, “the online notary public may not perform the online notarization.” There is no override and no manual workaround.

The knowledge-based authentication is harder than people expect. The standards adopted under § 117.295 require at least five questions drawn from public and proprietary records, at least five answer choices each, a time limit measured in minutes, a passing score of at least 80 per cent, and only one retry. People who have moved often, who have thin credit files, or who are recently arrived in the United States fail it more than anyone anticipates. It is worth knowing before the appointment rather than during it.

Everything is recorded. § 117.265(2) requires the notary to record the two-way session. § 117.245(2) specifies what the recording must contain — the appearance of you and every witness, confirmation of each identity, a description of the records being signed, the notary’s recitation identifying the notarial act, your declaration that the signature is knowingly and voluntarily made, and “all of the actions and spoken words of the principal, notary public, and any required witness during the entire online notarization.”

The certificate must say so. Under § 117.265(7) the electronic notarial certificate must note that the notarization was performed online, which is usually satisfied by the words “online notary” in or beside the seal.

What it costs at the notary’s end. Section 117.275 caps the fee for an online notarial act at $25. The platform’s own service fee is separate and is not capped by any statute. So is the qualified custodian’s. See what an online will costs.

Signing a Florida will from out of state, or from abroad

You do not have to be in Florida. § 732.522(4) deems an electronically signed instrument to be executed in this state if the instrument states that you intend to execute it, and understand that you are executing it, in and pursuant to the laws of Florida.

Note what that provision requires: a statement in the document. It is not something the notary says, not something you say on the recording, and not something a service can add afterwards. If it is not on the face of the instrument, the deeming rule does not operate.

That single provision is what makes the online route genuinely useful for out-of-state owners and for snowbirds — people who own Florida property but spend most of the year somewhere else — the seasonal resident with a condo, the family that kept a house here after moving north, the owner who has not set foot in the state since closing.

Then be careful who you name as executor. Under § 733.304 a person not domiciled in Florida cannot qualify as personal representative unless they are a legally adopted child or adoptive parent of yours; related to you by lineal consanguinity — a direct ancestor or descendant, so a parent or grandparent qualifies exactly as a child does; your spouse, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece, or someone related by lineal consanguinity to one of those; or the spouse of anyone in those categories.

An out-of-state friend, a business partner, a stepchild who was never adopted, a godparent — none of them can serve. This is a common and entirely invisible mistake in a downloaded form. The will is valid. The person you chose simply cannot serve, and the court appoints somebody else.

---

The question almost nobody answers: is your online will self-proved?

A self-proved will is one the court admits without tracking down the witnesses. For an electronic will, § 732.523 sets four conditions, and two of them have nothing to do with the signing ceremony at all — they are about who holds the file for the rest of your life.

When a will is self-proved, the witnesses swore at the time of signing that they watched you sign and watched each other sign, and that sworn statement travels with the document. Without it, your personal representative has to locate two people years or decades later and obtain their testimony before the will can be admitted. For a paper will, self-proof comes from the § 732.503 affidavit and that is the end of it.

For an electronic will, all four of these must hold:

1. The testator’s acknowledgment and the witnesses’ affidavits are made in accordance with § 732.503, and are part of the electronic record, attached to it, or logically associated with it.
2. The electronic will designates a qualified custodian. On the face of the document.
3. The electronic record is held in the custody of a qualified custodian at all times before being offered to the court for probate.
4. The qualified custodian holding the record at your death certifies under oath that, to the best of its knowledge, the record was at all times in qualified custody in compliance with § 732.524 and that the will has not been altered in any way since execution.

Read the third one again. Not “at the time of signing” — at all times. If the electronic record leaves qualified custody at any point between execution and probate, self-proof is gone. Downloading a copy for yourself is fine and is expressly protected. Moving the operative record out of custody is not.

An electronic will with no qualified custodian is still a valid will. It is simply not self-proved, and your family finds that out at the worst possible moment.

What a qualified custodian actually is

Not anyone can hold an electronic will. Section 732.524(1) requires a qualified custodian to be domiciled in and a resident of Florida, or to be incorporated, organized, or have its principal place of business in Florida. An out-of-state company with no Florida nexus cannot serve, whatever it says on its website.

The duties in § 732.524(2)–(13) are more extensive than most people realize. A qualified custodian must:

• Store the will in a secure system — defined by § 732.521(8) by reference to the standard for repositories holding online notaries’ electronic journals — together with the records attached to it and the notarial records described in § 117.245(1) and (2), which includes the audio-video recording.
• Furnish any court hearing on the will with whatever the court asks about the custodian’s qualifications, policies and practices.
• Restrict access to you, to people you authorized in the will or in signed written instructions executed with will formalities, to your nominated personal representative after your death, and to anyone a court directs.
• Provide a paper copy of the will and of the electronic record immediately on request, and may not charge you for the first one.
• Never terminate or suspend your access to, or downloads of, your own will. It may charge a fee for providing access; it may not withhold it.
• Keep what you gave it confidential.
• Bear liability for damages caused by negligent loss or destruction of the record — and may not limit that liability by contract.
• Deposit the will with the court under § 732.901 on receiving information that you have died, at no fee.

Two provisions in that list are quietly worth a great deal. § 732.524(9) makes the no-limitation-of-liability rule non-negotiable, which means a custodian’s terms of service cannot disclaim its way out of losing your will. And § 732.524(13) makes a contractual venue clause between a custodian and a testator unenforceable to the extent it dictates the jurisdiction or venue for a probate or will contest. Your family will not be litigating in Delaware because a sign-up page said so.

Section 732.525 adds the part that shows how seriously the Legislature took this. A qualified custodian must post a blanket surety bond of at least $250,000 payable to the Governor for the benefit of everyone who stores records with it, or carry a liability policy covering errors and omissions with at least $250,000 in the aggregate. If the custodian is ceasing operation, is closing without adequate arrangements for delivering the records, is in a condition the Attorney General judges to present a danger that records will be lost or misappropriated, or has let the bond or the insurance lapse, the Attorney General may petition a court to appoint a receiver to manage the records.

Those figures exist because the Legislature understood the obvious risk: the only original of your will is a file on somebody else’s server, and if that company disappears, so does your estate plan.

How to check a qualified custodian before you name one

Nothing in Florida licenses, registers or certifies qualified custodians. There is no application, no state list, and no regulator to complain to. A company becomes a qualified custodian by saying that it is one.

That is worth sitting with for a moment. § 732.524 sets qualifications; it creates no mechanism for anybody to check them in advance. When a service tells you your will is held by a qualified custodian, that is the company’s own assessment of itself, and no state agency has looked at it.

So the verification has to happen at the front end, and there is a precise way to do it.

Florida Probate Rule 5.930 is the official form of the affidavit a qualified custodian must swear when it deposits your will. The Florida Supreme Court adopted it in In re Amendments to Florida Probate Rules 5.040, 5.330, & 5.930, No. SC22-1137, 356 So. 3d 224 (Fla. 2023), effective 1 April 2023 at 12:01 a.m. It has six numbered paragraphs, unamended since adoption, and the last one is the useful one.

Paragraph 6 is where the whole of the due diligence collapses into one question. Whatever a company’s marketing says today, on the day you die somebody at that company has to sign this affidavit under oath and tick one of those two boxes. A custodian that has neither the bond nor the policy has a problem it cannot talk its way around — and by then you are not there to fix it.

Which gives you a question you can ask today, before you sign anything:

“Which box in paragraph 6 of the Rule 5.930 affidavit will you be able to tick, and can I see evidence of it now?”

A custodian that holds the bond or the policy answers that in one sentence and sends you the certificate. A custodian that changes the subject has told you something important, and it has told you before you signed rather than after you died.

Three follow-ups are worth the trouble as well:

• What Florida entity is the custodian, exactly? § 732.524(1) requires Florida domicile and residence, or Florida incorporation, organization or principal place of business. Ask for the entity name and look it up on Sunbiz. A national brand operating through an out-of-state parent does not qualify; a properly organized Florida subsidiary does.
• Who is the successor if the company winds down? § 732.524(4)(b) requires written notice to you and your written consent before the record moves, and § 732.524(6) means the successor must agree in writing to serve. A custodian that has never thought about this has no answer.
• Is the $250,000 written for the custodian role? Not the separate errors and omissions policy a RON platform carries under § 117.295 — on which see the three roles below. The two requirements carry the same figure, which is exactly what makes them easy to substitute for one another in a sales conversation.

How to change or fire your qualified custodian

You can move your electronic will to a different custodian at any time, but not by clicking anything. § 732.524(5) requires a written request “signed with the formalities required for the execution of a will in this state” — which means witnessed and executed like a will, not emailed.

The statute anticipates both directions, and the protections are real:

So the honest answer to “what happens if my custodian goes out of business” is: the statute gives you a route out and gives the Attorney General a route in, and neither is automatic. Somebody has to notice. Which is an argument for naming a custodian whose continued existence you can actually check, and for telling your personal representative where the will is while you are alive to tell them.

One more date to know. § 732.524(3) permits the custodian to destroy the electronic record and the associated documentation at any time after the earlier of the fifth anniversary of the conclusion of the administration of your estate, or 20 years after your death. That is the outer edge of how long any of this is guaranteed to exist.

The notary, the platform and the custodian are three different things

Signing a Florida will online involves three distinct statutory roles. They are commonly confused, sometimes by the companies performing them, and the confusion is not harmless.

The online notary public. A person — a Florida notary, a civil-law notary, or a commissioner of deeds — who has separately registered with the Department of State to perform online notarizations under § 117.225. This is who verifies your identity under § 117.265(4), supervises the witnesses under § 117.285, asks the five on-the-record questions under § 117.285(5)(d), and performs the notarial act. Their involvement ends when the session ends.

The RON service provider. Under §§ 117.201 and 117.295, the platform that supplies the audio-video communication technology and the related software, processes and data storage. It must file an annual self-certification with the Department of State — Fla. Admin. Code R. 1N-7.005, on Form DS-DOC-51 — and carry errors and omissions insurance of at least $250,000 in the annual aggregate. Online notaries must tell the Department which providers they use and notify it within 30 days of a change.

And it is the RON service provider — not the notary — that must administer the three screening questions. § 117.285(5)(a) is explicit: “Prior to facilitating witnessing of an instrument by means of audio-video communication technology, a RON service provider shall require the principal to answer the following questions.” The provider also gives the written vulnerable-adult notice under § 117.285(5)(c). The notary asks the five questions during the ceremony under § 117.285(5)(d).

That division is not a technicality. It means the platform you sign on is doing statutory work, not just streaming video — and a platform that implements § 117.285(5)(a) badly cannot produce a validly witnessed will. It is a common enough error that you will find it repeated on law firm websites, which is exactly why it is worth asking your provider, in writing, how it administers the questions and where it stores the answers.

The qualified custodian. Under § 732.524, the entity that holds your electronic will afterwards. It must be domiciled in or organized in Florida, must post the § 732.525 bond or carry the coverage, and must certify at your death that the record is unaltered. Unlike the other two, its obligation runs for as long as you live and beyond.

One company can hold more than one of these roles, and several advertise all three. But the requirements are separate, and being certified for one says nothing about the others.

Note especially that the $250,000 in § 117.295 and the $250,000 in § 732.525 are two different requirements, under two different statutes, for two different purposes. A provider’s RON errors-and-omissions insurance does not satisfy the custodian bond. The two happen to carry the same figure, which makes them very easy to substitute for one another in a sales conversation.

Before an electronic will names anyone, I confirm the custodian actually meets § 732.524, can evidence the bond or coverage § 732.525 requires, and that the coverage is written for the custodian role. The custodian is then named on the face of the will as § 732.523 requires, and its fee is disclosed to you as a separate third-party cost rather than folded invisibly into a package price.

---

The video file that decides whether your will survives

If the recording of your online notarization cannot be produced, Florida treats your electronic will as a lost or destroyed will. It is the one procedural failure in this entire framework that the savings clause does not forgive, and almost nobody signing an electronic will has been told about it.

Start with the general rule, because it makes the exception visible. Section 117.265(9) is generous: any failure to comply with the online notarization procedures “does not impair the validity of the notarial act or the electronic record that was notarized,” though it may be introduced as evidence of fraud, forgery, impersonation, duress, incapacity, undue influence, minority, illegality or unconscionability. A missed step is evidence, not a death sentence.

Then read § 117.245(5). If the recording of the audio-video communication relating to the online notarization of the execution of an electronic will cannot be produced by the RON service provider, the online notary public, or the qualified custodian, the electronic will is treated as a lost or destroyed will subject to § 733.207.

There is a savings clause for almost everything, and a hole in it exactly the size of one video file.

The retention rules explain how that file can go missing. § 117.245(4) requires the electronic journal and the recordings to be kept for at least 10 years after the notarial act. For an electronic will specifically, a full copy of the recording must be maintained by a qualified custodian in accordance with chapters 731 and 732. And § 732.524(3) lets the custodian destroy everything after the earlier of five years past the close of your estate administration or 20 years after your death.

So the picture is this:

Your will is a file. The proof that you signed it is a different file, held by a different company, under a different statute, on a retention clock that runs on the notarial act rather than on your life. Lose the second file and Florida treats your will as lost — which means your family must establish its contents the hard way under § 733.207, exactly the burden the electronic route was supposed to remove.

What § 733.207 requires is worth knowing, because it is the fallback that makes the recording matter. Any interested person may establish the full and precise terms of a lost or destroyed will and offer it for probate — but the specific content of the will “must be proved by the testimony of two disinterested witnesses, or, if a correct copy is provided, it shall be proved by one disinterested witness.” Disinterested means taking nothing under it. The people most likely to remember what the will said are usually the people who cannot prove it.

What this means in practice. If you sign an electronic will, three questions have real consequences and none of them is about the will’s language: who is holding the recording, for how long, and what happens to it if that company is sold, merged, or wound up. A recording held by a RON platform on a 10-year clock and a will held by a custodian for the rest of your life is a mismatch, and if you sign at 55 and die at 80 the arithmetic is not on your side. § 117.245(4)’s requirement that a qualified custodian hold a full copy of the will recording exists precisely to close that gap — and it is a requirement worth confirming has actually been satisfied, in writing, rather than assumed.

§ 117.285(6) is the other half of the same point. On a subpoena, a court order, an authorized law enforcement inquiry or other lawful request, the RON service provider or the online notary must produce the last known address of every witness, your answers to the screening and ceremony questions, and “an uninterrupted and unedited copy” of the recording. The file is not a courtesy. It is evidence, and the statute assumes somebody will one day come looking for it.

---

The questions Florida law requires before you can sign remotely

Before a will can be witnessed by people appearing on video, § 117.285(5)(a) requires the RON service provider to make you answer three questions. If you answer yes to any one of them, remote witnessing is off the table — but the electronic will is not.

Which documents this applies to

§ 117.285(5) covers a specific list, and only when fewer than two witnesses are in your physical presence:

• A will under chapter 732
• A revocable trust with testamentary aspects as described in § 736.0403(2)(b)
• A health care advance directive
• An agreement concerning succession, or a waiver of spousal rights, under § 732.701 or § 732.702
• A power of attorney authorizing any of the transactions enumerated in § 709.2208 — the banking and investment powers

The three questions

The statute prescribes them in substantially this form:

1. “Are you under the influence of any drug or alcohol today that impairs your ability to make decisions?”
2. “Do you have any physical or mental condition or long-term disability that impairs your ability to perform the normal activities of daily living?”
3. “Do you require assistance with daily care?”

If any one of them is answered in the affirmative, § 117.285(5)(b) provides that your signature may only be validly witnessed by witnesses in your physical presence at the time of signing.

After you submit those answers, § 117.285(5)(c) requires the provider to give you written notice in substantially this form: if you are a vulnerable adult as defined in § 415.102, the documents you are about to sign are not valid if witnessed by audio-video technology, and if you suspect you may be one you should have witnesses physically present before signing.

§ 117.285(5)(g) then makes the substantive rule and allocates the burden: witnessing by audio-video presence is not effective at all for a principal who is a vulnerable adult, and “the contestant of an electronic record has the burden of proving that the principal was a vulnerable adult at the time of executing the electronic record.”

Answering “yes” does not mean you cannot have an electronic will

This is the part almost every article on this subject gets wrong, and it matters to exactly the people it is hardest on. A “yes” closes remote witnessing. It does not close the electronic will.

The whole of § 117.285(5) — the three questions, the five questions, the vulnerable-adult notice, all of it — applies only “when fewer than two witnesses are in the physical presence of the principal.” And § 117.285(5)(k) says so a second time, from the other direction: “The requirements of this subsection do not apply if there are at least two witnesses in the physical presence of the principal at the time of the notarial act.”

So the answer for a person who needs help with daily care, or who has a long-term disability, or who is caring for a spouse who does, is not “you cannot sign online.” It is a hybrid ceremony: two witnesses physically with you, the online notary supervising by video, the will still signed electronically and still an electronic will under § 732.522. Two people in a room and a notary on a screen. The screening requirements switch off entirely, and the will is executed under exactly the same statute.

That is a meaningfully better answer than the one most people are given, and it is available today.

The five questions the notary asks during the signing

Where witnessing is remote, § 117.285(5)(d) makes the act of witnessing valid “only if” you give verbal answers, during the audio-video communication, to five questions the online notary public must ask in substantially this form:

1. “Are you currently married? If so, name your spouse.”
2. “Please state the names of anyone who assisted you in accessing this video conference today.”
3. “Please state the names of anyone who assisted you in preparing the documents you are signing today.”
4. “Where are you currently located?”
5. “Who is in the room with you?”

They are not a formality and they are not idle curiosity. § 117.285(5)(e) requires the notary to consider your answers in carrying out the duties imposed by § 117.107(5) — the rule that a notary may not notarize a signature if the person appears to lack the mental capacity to understand what is happening, or does not appear to be acting of his or her own free will. The questions are the mechanism by which that duty has teeth over a video link.

§ 117.285(5)(f) sets the evidentiary weight carefully: your responses to both sets of questions “may be offered as evidence regarding the validity of the instrument, but an incorrect answer may not serve as the sole basis to invalidate an instrument.” A wrong answer does not void the will. It becomes part of the file, and stays there.

Two smaller requirements complete the picture. § 117.285(5)(i) requires the electronic record to carry “a perceptible indication” that the witnesses were present by audio-video means. And § 117.285(5)(h) preserves the non-testamentary parts of a revocable trust and the non-§ 709.2208 authority in a power of attorney, so a document that fails the remote-witnessing test for one purpose does not necessarily fail for all of them.

---

Why the online route has more requirements than signing in person, not fewer

A traditional paper will requires your signature at the end, two witnesses, and those witnesses signing in each other’s presence and yours. Self-proof requires one additional affidavit under § 732.503. That is the whole list.

An electronic will requires all of the equivalent formalities, plus an online notary registered under chapter 117, plus an authenticated online notarization session meeting § 117.265, plus the § 117.285 screening that may remove the remote route entirely, plus a designated qualified custodian, plus unbroken qualified custody until probate, plus a custodian certification at death, plus a recording that has to still exist when it is asked for.

The online will is more convenient. It is not simpler. Every service advertising a Florida will in fifteen minutes is describing the convenience and staying quiet about the rest, and the parts they leave out are the parts that determine what happens after you die — which is the only time the document is ever used.

Revoking an electronic will is harder than revoking a paper one

Section 732.506 treats the two differently in a single sentence, and the difference is easy to miss.

A will other than an electronic will is revoked by the testator, or by someone in the testator’s presence and at the testator’s direction, by burning, tearing, cancelling, defacing, obliterating or destroying it with the intent and for the purpose of revocation. An electronic will is revoked the equivalent way — by deleting, cancelling, rendering unreadable or obliterating the electronic record, with the same intent — but only “as proved by clear and convincing evidence.”

That heightened standard applies to electronic wills alone. Tearing up a paper will in front of your family is self-evident. Deleting a file is not, and a court asked to find that a deletion was a deliberate revocation rather than an accident, a sync error, a device wipe or somebody else’s doing will demand considerably more.

Note also that a qualified custodian is required by § 732.524(10) never to suspend your access to your own will, but the will it holds is the operative electronic record. Deleting the copy on your laptop revokes nothing at all.

The practical answer is to use § 732.505 instead. Revocation by writing is unaffected by any of this: a subsequent will or codicil expressly declaring the revocation, executed with the same formalities required for a will, revokes the earlier one cleanly. If you have an electronic will and you want it gone, do not simply delete the file. Execute a new will that expressly revokes it, and let the record show the intention.

One more revocation rule catches people, and it operates whether or not you do anything. Under § 732.507(2), a dissolution of marriage or an annulment renders void any provision of your will that affects your former spouse, and the will is then read as if the former spouse had died at the time of the dissolution. And under § 732.703 the same logic reaches most beneficiary designations — life insurance, annuities, payable-on-death accounts, retirement plans — which are void as to a former spouse on dissolution. Neither is something an online form will warn you about.

---

Which online will services actually work in Florida

Almost every national will service sells Floridians a paper will — a document you print and sign in front of two physical witnesses. The thing that makes a Florida electronic will self-proved, a qualified custodian, is mentioned by roughly half of them and offered by almost none.

What follows is drawn from each company’s own published Florida pages, checked on 26 August 2026. Prices and content change; verify before you buy. I have no commercial relationship with any of them and this is not a recommendation of any of them.

What their own pages say

Read the third column before the fourth. LegalZoom, FreeWill, Rocket Lawyer, Nolo and U.S. Legal Wills do not mention qualified custodians at all. LegalZoom’s Florida guide runs to roughly 8,000 words, describes the electronic-will process at length, and never says that without a qualified custodian the resulting will is not self-proved. That is not a small omission. It is the single fact that decides whether your family has to find your witnesses.

Trust & Will does better — its Florida pages define the role correctly (“A qualified custodian is someone who is a resident of and domiciled in Florida. They can also be an incorporated business”) and note that “Florida statutes require that you provide your electronic record and notary session recording to a qualified custodian.” It does not claim to be one.

How do online will makers ensure compliance with Florida law?

Mostly, they don’t — and they are not pretending to. An online will maker generates a document against a state-specific template and then hands the hard part, execution, back to you. Compliance with Florida law is decided at the signing table, not in the questionnaire.

It is worth separating the three things people mean when they ask whether an online will service is compliant, because a service can pass one and fail the others.

1. Does the document say things Florida law permits? This is the part the state-specific template actually addresses, and most of the national services get the basics right — two witnesses, signature at the end, no holographic wills. It is also the shallowest kind of compliance. A template cannot know that your house is homestead, that you remarried after your last will, or that your named executor lives in Ohio and is not a relative.
2. Was it executed correctly? Under § 732.502 that is entirely on you and your witnesses. No online will maker is in the room. This is where most homemade wills fail, and no service warrants otherwise — read the terms of any of them and you will find the disclaimer.
3. If it is a true electronic will, did the platform meet its own statutory duties? This is the one place where Florida law puts a compliance obligation on the company rather than on you, and almost nobody knows it exists.

The compliance duties Florida actually imposes on the platform

A RON service provider is not just a video pipe. Under § 117.295 and Fla. Admin. Code R. 1N-7.005 it must file an annual self-certification with the Florida Department of State, on Form DS-DOC-51, confirming that its audio-video technology meets chapter 117, and it must carry errors and omissions insurance of at least $250,000 in the annual aggregate. It must identify any secure repository it delegates storage to, and amend the filing within 30 days of a change.

And under § 117.285(5)(a) the provider — not the notary — must put the three screening questions to you before facilitating remote witnessing of a will, then give you the written vulnerable-adult notice under § 117.285(5)(c). A platform that does not implement that correctly cannot produce a validly witnessed electronic will, and the defect will not be visible in the finished document.

So the compliance question worth asking an online will service is not “is your form valid in Florida.” It is: “Are you a registered Florida RON service provider, have you filed your current annual self-certification with the Department of State, and how do you administer the three § 117.285(5)(a) questions?” A provider that is genuinely in this business answers that in one email. A provider that is selling you a printed form will tell you the question does not apply — which is itself the answer you needed.

A note for donors and nonprofits. Many people meet an online will maker through a charity’s bequest campaign rather than through an estate-planning search, and the tools used in planned giving are almost always the print-and-sign kind. That is not a criticism of them — a simple bequest is exactly the situation where a form can work. But the charity is not warranting the legal execution requirements in your home state, and neither is the software. If the gift matters to you, the twenty minutes spent on execution is what makes it real.

How long does it take, and do you still need a lawyer to finalize it?

A guided online tool will get you to a finished draft in fifteen to forty minutes. That is the number the marketing quotes, and it is accurate as far as it goes.

What it leaves out is that the draft is not a will until it is executed. For a printed form, finalizing means assembling two witnesses and, if you want self-proof, a notary — and getting all of the signatures in one sitting. For a true electronic will, the online notarization session itself typically runs twenty to forty minutes once identity proofing is done, and the qualified custodian arrangement has to be in place before you sign, not after.

Do you need a lawyer to finalize it? Legally, no — Florida imposes no such requirement, and this page has already said so twice. Practically, the honest test is whether anything in the DIY section applies to you. If none of it does, execute it carefully and you are likely fine. If any of it does, the document you finished in twenty minutes contains a defect that nobody will notice until the person who could have fixed it has died.

Errors on the pages people are relying on

These are quoted verbatim from the companies’ own live pages, because the point is not that online services are bad — it is that the Florida-specific law is getting stated wrongly by the largest names in the category.

The two companies that say they are qualified custodians

Two consumer-facing entities hold themselves out as Florida qualified custodians. Both are document services rather than law firms.

• Florida Document Specialists (Mariposa Professional Services, Inc.) — “We serve as your designated Qualified Custodian, taking legal responsibility for the integrity and future retrieval of your original electronic record.” Published price $395 single, $695 couple.
• WillAgent — “As a Florida Qualified Custodian, we hold the electronic original under FL §732.524 and file it.” Published price $399 single, $699 couple. It operates a separate Florida entity for the custody role.

Both may well be exactly what they say. The point is the one made above: there is no state registry, no license and no regulator, so every claim of qualified-custodian status in Florida is self-asserted, by every company, necessarily. The Rule 5.930 question is how you check it.

What this adds up to

If you want a paper will and your situation is genuinely simple, several of these services will produce one that Florida will admit, provided you execute it correctly. FreeWill’s Florida legal content, for what it is worth, was the most accurate of the free tier when I checked it.

If you want a true § 732.522 electronic will — signed electronically, never printed, self-proved and held in qualified custody — the field narrows to almost nothing, and what remains is not legal advice. None of these companies is reviewing your deed, your marital status, your beneficiary designations or whether your homestead can be devised at all. Which is the subject of the next section.

---

When a DIY online service is enough, and when it is not

Honestly: Florida does not require you to hire a lawyer to make a will. For a genuinely simple estate — modest assets, no real property complications, an intact family, everyone adult and in agreement — a well-drafted form can do the job, provided the signing ceremony is done correctly.

Here is where forms fail, and each of these is a rule the form cannot see.

Homestead

Under Article X, Section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution and § 732.4015, if you are survived by a spouse or a minor child, your homestead cannot be devised at all — with one exception, to the spouse outright if there is no minor child.

Leave the house to your children in a will while you have a surviving spouse, and that devise fails. The property passes under § 732.401 instead of your plan: the surviving spouse takes a life estate in the homestead with a vested remainder to the descendants — or, under § 732.401(2), the spouse may instead elect an undivided one-half interest as a tenant in common, with the other half vesting in the descendants. That election must be made within six months of the death and during the spouse’s lifetime, by filing a notice of election in the county records, and once made it is irrevocable. Neither outcome is likely to be what anyone intended, and the six-month clock runs whether or not the family knows it exists.

§ 732.4015(2) extends “owner” to the grantor of a revocable trust and “devise” to a disposition by trust of what would be homestead, so putting the house in a trust does not step around the restriction. § 732.4017 governs when a lifetime transfer counts as a devise for this purpose.

No downloaded form will warn you, because the restriction exists in almost no other state and the form has no idea whether the property is your homestead.

A surviving spouse has rights your will cannot override

Three of them, at least, and none is optional:

• The elective share. Section 732.201 gives a surviving spouse of a person dying domiciled in Florida the right to elect against the will, and § 732.2065 fixes the amount: “an amount equal to 30 percent of the elective estate.” The elective estate is calculated across a wide range of assets under § 732.2035, not merely what passes under the will.
• The pretermitted spouse. Under § 732.301, a spouse you married after executing the will generally takes an intestate share, unless a prenuptial agreement provides otherwise, the will discloses an intention not to provide, or the spouse is provided for in the will. Marrying after you signed is enough to rewrite the outcome.
• Exempt property and family allowance. § 732.402 gives a surviving spouse or children household furniture, furnishings and appliances up to $20,000 of net value as of the date of death, plus two motor vehicles regularly used by the decedent or the immediate family, ahead of most claims — but the petition must be filed on or before the later of four months after service of the notice of administration or 40 days after termination of any proceeding involving the will. Miss it and the right is lost. § 732.403 allows a family allowance not exceeding $18,000 in total.

A pretermitted child is the parallel rule: under § 732.302 a child born or adopted after the will was made takes an intestate share unless the omission was intentional and appears from the will, or you left substantially all of the estate to that child’s other parent.

Blended families

Children from a prior relationship are the most common source of contested Florida estates, and the reason is structural rather than emotional: the elective share, the homestead restriction and the pretermitted-spouse rule all interact, and a document that addresses one while ignoring the others produces a result nobody chose. This needs to be designed, not filled in.

An out-of-state personal representative

Covered above — § 733.304 disqualifies a non-resident who is not within the listed family relationships. The nomination of a friend, a colleague or an unadopted stepchild who lives in another state is void as a practical matter, and the will gives no hint of it.

Separate disqualifications catch people as well. Under § 733.303 a person is not qualified to act as personal representative if they have been convicted of a felony; have been convicted, in any state or foreign jurisdiction, of abuse, neglect or exploitation of an elderly person or a disabled adult as those terms are defined in § 825.101; are mentally or physically unable to perform the duties; or are under the age of 18. Note that the elder-abuse ground requires a conviction, not merely an allegation or a civil finding.

A business interest, or property in more than one state

Both require structure the form does not contemplate. Out-of-state real property generally means an ancillary administration in the other state on top of the Florida probate, and a business interest without a succession mechanism usually means the operating agreement, not the will, decides what happens.

And the quiet one: how hard is your will to attack?

A self-made will with no self-proof and witnesses nobody can locate is markedly easier to challenge than one executed with an affidavit and a clean record of the ceremony. Under § 733.107 the burden of proof in a will contest can shift to the proponent where a confidential relationship and active procurement are shown — the framework set out in In re Estate of Carpenter, 253 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1971). Where a will was executed on video with statutory screening questions on the record, that record cuts both ways: it is the best evidence of a clean ceremony, and it is discoverable evidence of a bad one.

Objections have a deadline. Under § 733.212(3) an interested person served with a notice of administration generally has three months to object to the validity of the will, the venue or the court’s jurisdiction, or the objection is barred.

The money saved on drafting can be spent many times over in the litigation afterwards, and it will be spent by the people you were trying to provide for.

---

What happens if you have no valid will

Florida writes one for you, and it does not know about your stepchildren, your caregiver, or the friend who has been there for twenty years.

Under § 732.102 and § 732.103, the intestate estate passes like this:

Note what is not on that list: a partner you never married, a stepchild you never adopted, a charity, a godchild, a friend. Intestacy is a formula, and no formula accounts for the people who are not on it.

This is also the outcome when an online will fails. A will that cannot be admitted is not a partial success.

---

What happens at the courthouse

A will has to be physically delivered to the clerk before anything can happen, and the clock is short. Section 732.901(1) requires the custodian of a will to deposit it with the clerk of the court having venue of the estate within 10 days after receiving information that the testator is dead.

“Custodian” here means whoever is holding it — a spouse, an adult child, a lawyer, a bank, or, for an electronic will, the qualified custodian. Depositing is not the same as opening probate; it is a separate, earlier, mandatory step, and a court may compel it.

For electronic wills, § 732.526 supplies two routes:

• Electronic filing. An electronic will filed with the clerk through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal is deemed to have been deposited with the clerk as an original.
• Certified paper. A paper copy of an electronic will certified by a notary public to be a true and correct copy may be offered for and admitted to probate, and constitutes an original.

§ 732.524(11) closes the loop: the qualified custodian must make the deposit, and may not charge a fee for doing so, provided the affidavit is made in accordance with § 732.503. The Rule 5.930 affidavit is what accompanies it.

So the file does become a court record in the end. The question § 732.523 answers is whether it arrives there provable, or merely valid. And the question § 117.245(5) answers is whether it arrives there at all.

---

What an online will costs in Florida

Published prices in August 2026 run from free to roughly $700 for a document service, and roughly $300 to $1,000 for an attorney-drafted simple will. Two costs sit outside all of that: the online notarial act is capped by statute at $25, and a qualified custodian’s fee is a third-party charge that should be disclosed to you separately.

Those figures are drawn from providers’ published prices and from Florida firms that publish flat fees, checked in August 2026. They move.

What no price list captures is the part that actually varies: a single will for an uncomplicated estate is a different piece of work from a plan for a couple with homestead property, children from earlier marriages, a business interest, or assets in another state. And a will alone is a different thing from a will paired with a durable power of attorney, a health care surrogate designation and a living will — which is what most people actually need and what an online will alone does not give them.

My own fee for this work is discussed directly with me, not published as a number. That is deliberate. A figure on a web page is either wrong for most of the people reading it or so hedged that it tells nobody anything, and a will is the kind of work where the price follows the facts — whether there is homestead, whether there is a prior marriage, whether a business or out-of-state property is involved, and how many documents the plan actually needs.

So the arrangement is this. We talk first. I tell you what the work involves and what it costs, in a fixed figure wherever the matter allows one, before you commit to anything. If the electronic route is used, the qualified custodian’s fee is a genuine third-party cost and I will tell you what it is as a separate line rather than fold it invisibly into a package price. Nothing starts, and nothing is billed, until you have the number and have said yes to it.

---

A living will is not a will

They share a word and nothing else. A last will and testament says who gets your property after you die. A living will says what medical treatment you do and do not want if you are unable to say so yourself, and it stops mattering the moment you die.

Living wills are governed by chapter 765, not chapter 732. Under § 765.302 a living will is made by a competent adult, signed in the presence of two subscribing witnesses, at least one of whom is neither the spouse nor a blood relative. There is no notary requirement, no probate, and no qualified custodian — and there is a practical requirement the statute makes plain: it does nothing if nobody knows it exists. Give a copy to your health care surrogate and to your physician.

A living will is one of the documents § 117.285(5) covers as a “health care advance directive,” so the screening questions apply to signing one remotely in the same way they apply to a will.

Most people searching for an “online will” need three or four documents, not one: a will, a durable power of attorney, a designation of health care surrogate, and a living will. An online service that sells you the first and stays quiet about the other three has left the hardest year of your family’s life uncovered.

---

Has any Florida court ruled on electronic wills?

No. As of August 2026, no Florida appellate court has published a decision interpreting the Florida Electronic Wills Act. Six years, and no appellate guidance.

That is worth saying plainly, because it changes how the risk should be read. Every question about how these wills fail in litigation — what “at all times” means at the margins, what happens when a custodian’s affidavit is imperfect, how a court weighs a screening answer against a capacity claim — is currently answered by the statutory text alone, without a court having tested any of it.

The most significant judicial action to date is procedural rather than substantive: the Florida Supreme Court’s adoption of Florida Probate Rule 5.930, effective 1 April 2023, in In re Amendments to Florida Probate Rules 5.040, 5.330, & 5.930, 356 So. 3d 224 (Fla. 2023) — the form of the qualified custodian’s affidavit.

Decisions on traditional execution formalities still govern, because § 732.522(3) requires an electronic will to be judged in the same manner as one executed under § 732.502. Zaidman and Caveglia, discussed above, are the recent ones on foreign and holographic wills.

The statutes themselves have been stable. Chapter 2019-71 created the framework; chapter 2021-205, effective 29 June 2021, amended § 732.521 and rewrote § 117.285 to add the vulnerable-adult protections and the screening questions. Nothing in the 2022 through 2026 sessions has changed §§ 732.521–732.526 or § 117.285.

This page is reviewed against the current statutes and will be updated when that changes — including on the day the first appellate opinion lands.

---

How the process works

1. We talk first. A video conversation about your family, your property, and what you want to happen. Most of the complications above surface here, which is the point of doing it before anything is drafted — and it is also where I tell you what the work costs, before you have committed to anything.
2. I draft the documents. Not a form with your name in it — documents written for the situation we discussed, including the homestead, spousal and personal-representative issues that apply to you.
3. You review, and we revise. In writing and on video, until it says what you meant.
4. We choose the signing route. If remote witnessing is available and suits you, we schedule the online notarization with the witnesses appearing by video. If the § 117.285 screening rules it out, or you would simply rather, we arrange a hybrid ceremony with two witnesses present and the notary on video, or a conventional in-person signing. All three produce a self-proved will.
5. The record is deposited. If the will is executed electronically, the record goes to the qualified custodian named in it and stays in that custody — which is what keeps § 732.523 satisfied and your will self-proved — and we confirm in writing who holds the audio-video recording and for how long.

To start, call (305) 224-6811 or send a message through the contact page.

---

Frequently asked questions

Are online wills legal in Florida?

Yes. Florida’s Electronic Wills Act took effect for electronic wills on 1 July 2020, and § 732.522 permits a will to be signed with an electronic signature and witnessed by people appearing through audio-video communication technology, supervised by a Florida online notary public under § 117.285. Most documents sold as “online wills,” however, are not electronic wills at all — they are ordinary paper wills you print and sign in front of two physical witnesses under § 732.502.

Do online wills hold up in court in Florida?

A properly executed one does. Under § 732.522(3), all questions as to the force, effect, validity and interpretation of an electronic will are determined in the same manner as for a will executed under § 732.502 — so it is judged by the same standards for capacity, undue influence and formality. What determines how hard it is to admit is whether it is self-proved. Under § 732.523 an electronic will is self-proved only if it designates a qualified custodian and stays in qualified custody at all times before probate. Without that, your personal representative must locate the witnesses and obtain their testimony. And under § 117.245(5), if the recording of the notarization cannot be produced, the will is treated as a lost or destroyed will under § 733.207.

Is an online will legally binding in Florida?

Yes, if it was executed correctly. A printed online form is binding when signed at the end in the presence of two attesting witnesses who sign in your presence and in each other’s, per § 732.502. A true electronic will is binding when the four conditions of § 732.522(2) are met. Being binding and being provable are different questions, and the second is where online wills most often fail.

Does a Florida will have to be notarized?

Not to be valid. § 732.502 requires your signature and two witnesses and nothing more. A notary is what makes the will self-proved under § 732.503, so that it can be admitted without witness testimony. The exception is an electronic will: there the online notary is structurally required by § 732.522(2)(a), because the notary’s supervision is what makes remote witnessing lawful in the first place.

Who can notarize a will in Florida?

Any Florida notary public can take the § 732.503 self-proving affidavit on a paper will. Only an online notary public — separately registered with the Department of State under § 117.225 — may supervise the remote witnessing of an electronic will, and under § 117.209(3) that notary must be physically located in Florida at the time. An out-of-state notary authorized to perform remote notarizations in their own state is not a Florida online notary public.

Can I write my own will without a lawyer in Florida?

Legally, yes. Florida imposes no requirement that a lawyer prepare your will. Whether you should depends on your situation. Homestead property with a surviving spouse or a minor child, a blended family, a business interest, or an out-of-state executor are the circumstances in which forms most reliably fail — and each of them fails silently, because no court reviews a will before you die.

How much does it cost to do a will online in Florida?

Published prices in August 2026 run from free for the basic online forms to roughly $129–$299 for the paid tiers, and roughly $395–$699 for a document service that also acts as qualified custodian. Florida attorneys publishing flat fees commonly quote $300–$1,000 for a simple will and $1,500–$4,000 for a full estate plan. Two costs sit outside all of that: § 117.275 caps the online notarial act itself at $25, while the RON platform’s service fee is not capped, and a qualified custodian’s fee is a separate third-party cost that should be disclosed to you rather than folded into a package price. My own fee for this work is not published as a figure — it depends on what your situation actually requires, so it is discussed with me directly and quoted before any work begins.

Does LegalZoom, Trust & Will or FreeWill work for a Florida will?

They will produce a document. Read their own Florida pages carefully on two points. First, whether what you receive is a printed will you must sign in front of two physical witnesses, or a true § 732.522 electronic will. Second, whether a qualified custodian is involved at all — because without one, § 732.523 means the will is not self-proved. As of August 2026, LegalZoom, FreeWill, Rocket Lawyer, Nolo and U.S. Legal Wills do not mention qualified custodians anywhere on their Florida pages. Trust & Will defines the role and does not claim to fill it. Several of those pages also contain outright errors about Florida law, which are quoted and corrected above.

Do I need a qualified custodian for my Florida electronic will?

Not for the will to be valid — but yes, for it to be self-proved. § 732.523 requires the will to designate a qualified custodian and requires the electronic record to stay in qualified custody at all times before it is offered for probate, and requires the custodian to certify at your death that the record was never out of qualified custody and has not been altered. Without that, your personal representative has to find your witnesses and obtain their testimony before the will can be admitted.

Is the qualified custodian the same as the online notary?

No, and there is a third role as well. The online notary is a person registered under § 117.225 who supervises the signing session, asks the five questions required by § 117.285(5)(d), and is then finished. The RON service provider is the platform supplying the audio-video technology under §§ 117.201 and 117.295 — and it is the provider, not the notary, that § 117.285(5)(a) requires to administer the three screening questions. The qualified custodian is an entity under § 732.524 that holds the electronic record for as long as you live and certifies at your death that it has not been altered. One company can perform more than one role, but the qualifications are separate, and a provider’s $250,000 errors and omissions insurance under § 117.295 does not satisfy the $250,000 custodian bond under § 732.525.

What happens if my qualified custodian goes out of business?

§ 732.524(4) requires a custodian that ceases to serve either to deliver the will back to you, or, if you have died, to file it with the court under § 732.901. If it wants to hand you to a successor it must give you written notice of that successor’s name, address and qualifications, and you must consent in writing before the record moves. The successor cannot take over unless it agrees in writing, and it must receive an affidavit tracing unbroken custody through every predecessor. If the custodian is ceasing operation, closing without arrangements, endangering the records or has let its bond or insurance lapse, § 732.525(2) allows the Attorney General to petition for a receiver. You can also move at any time on your own initiative under § 732.524(5) — but the request must be in writing and executed with the same formalities as a will.

Can I sign a Florida will if I live in another state?

Yes. Under § 732.522(4) the will is deemed executed in Florida if the instrument states that you intend to execute it, and understand that you are executing it, in and pursuant to the laws of Florida — and that statement has to be on the face of the document. Under §§ 117.209(3) and 117.265(1) the online notary must be physically in Florida, but you may be anywhere, including outside the United States. If you are outside Florida, § 117.265(3) requires you to confirm verbally or in writing that you want a Florida notary and Florida law to govern. Be careful who you name as personal representative: § 733.304 bars a non-resident who is not a close relative.

Can my witnesses be outside the United States?

Not if they are appearing remotely. § 117.285(4) requires a witness who is remote from you and appearing by audio-video communication technology to verbally confirm that he or she is a resident of, and physically located within, the United States or a United States territory at the time of witnessing. You can sign from anywhere in the world; a remote witness cannot. A witness who is physically in the room with you has no location restriction, but must state his or her name and current address on the recording under § 117.285(2).

Why was I asked whether I need help with daily care?

Because § 117.285(5)(a) requires the RON service provider to ask it, along with questions about drugs or alcohol and about any condition that impairs the normal activities of daily living, before facilitating remote witnessing of a will. If you answer yes to any of the three, § 117.285(5)(b) means your signature can only be validly witnessed by witnesses physically present with you. That does not end the electronic will route. § 117.285(5)(k) provides that none of these requirements apply where at least two witnesses are in your physical presence, so a hybrid ceremony — two witnesses in the room, the online notary on video — still produces a valid electronic will under § 732.522.

Is a handwritten will valid in Florida?

Only if it meets the ordinary formalities: signed at the end, two witnesses, each signing in the presence of the testator and of each other. Handwriting does not invalidate a will, and § 732.502(2) says expressly that a will in the testator’s handwriting executed in accordance with § 732.502(1) is not a holographic will. What Florida does not recognize is a holographic will — handwritten and signed without witnesses — and § 732.502(2) excludes holographic and nuncupative wills from the rule that saves out-of-state wills valid where executed. See Zaidman v. Zaidman, 305 So. 3d 330 (Fla. 3d DCA 2020) and Caveglia v. Heinen, 359 So. 3d 745 (Fla. 4th DCA 2023), the latter holding that such a will cannot even operate to revoke an earlier one.

How do I revoke an electronic will?

Not by deleting it. § 732.506 does allow revocation of an electronic will by deleting, cancelling, rendering unreadable or obliterating the electronic record with the intent to revoke — but only as proved by clear and convincing evidence, a heightened standard that applies to electronic wills alone. A court asked to find that a deletion was deliberate rather than an accident, a sync error or somebody else’s doing will require a great deal. The reliable route is § 732.505: execute a new will or codicil that expressly revokes the earlier one, with the same formalities required for a will.

Where should I store my Florida will?

Somewhere your personal representative can actually reach it within days of your death, because § 732.901 requires whoever holds it to deposit it with the clerk within 10 days of learning that you have died. A safe deposit box in your sole name is a common and avoidable problem. For an electronic will the question is different — the operative record lives with the qualified custodian, you keep a downloaded copy under § 732.524(10), and you may request a paper copy at any time, free the first time, under § 732.524(8). Tell your personal representative who the custodian is while you are alive to tell them.

What happens to my electronic will when I die?

Under § 732.524(11) the qualified custodian must deposit the will with the court in accordance with § 732.901 on receiving information of your death, and may not charge a fee for doing so. § 732.526 then provides two routes: an electronic will filed through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal is deemed deposited with the clerk as an original, or a paper copy certified by a notary public as a true and correct copy may be offered for and admitted to probate as an original. If the will was self-proved under § 732.523, the custodian also swears the affidavit set out in Florida Probate Rule 5.930 — adopted effective 1 April 2023 — confirming unbroken qualified custody, no alteration, and, in paragraph 6, that it holds either the § 732.525(1)(a) surety bond or the § 732.525(1)(b) liability policy.

---

Talk to a Florida probate and estate planning attorney

An online will can be the right answer. It can also be a valid document that nobody can prove, holding a house that could never be devised in the first place. The difference is usually decided before anything is signed.

A short call can tell you which of those you are looking at, and what it would take to fix — at no cost.

Call (305) 224-6811 or send us a message.

This page is general information about Florida law, current as of August 2026, and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and prices change, and how any of this applies depends on facts specific to you. Third-party services and prices are described from those companies’ own published pages as of 26 August 2026; nothing here is an endorsement of, or a warning against, any of them.