Made a Will or Trust online? What happens next in Arizona

If you made a Will online

Arizona spells out how a Will is executed. Under A.R.S. § 14-2502, a paper Will is in writing, signed by you (or by someone in your conscious presence and at your direction) and signed by at least two people who witnessed your signing or your acknowledgment; a Will whose signature and material provisions are in your handwriting is valid as a holographic Will, witnessed or not (A.R.S. § 14-2503). A self-proving affidavit proves it without the witnesses' testimony (A.R.S. § 14-2504). A document you only downloaded is not yet a Will.

Add the self-proving affidavit if you can. Under A.R.S. § 14-2504, a notarized self-proving affidavit lets the probate court accept the Will without tracking down your witnesses years later — a small step now that saves your family real friction.

A Will does not avoid probate. It is the instruction sheet FOR probate — the court process that moves what you owned to the people you named. If avoiding probate was the goal, that is a different tool.

The original document matters. After your death, whoever holds your Will delivers it, on an interested person's request, to a person able to secure its probate or to the court (A.R.S. § 14-2516); Arizona has no deposit with the court during your life. Someone you trust needs to know it exists and where it is — a PDF in an app only you can open does not meet the moment.

If you made a Trust online

Check how it was made. Arizona creates a trust only when a settlor with capacity indicates an intention to create it, there is a definite beneficiary, the trustee has duties to perform, and the same person is not both sole trustee and sole beneficiary (A.R.S. § 14-10402); an oral trust needs clear and convincing evidence, and a written trust is amended or revoked only in writing (A.R.S. § 14-10407). If anything about your online Trust's signing is unclear, raise it first with an Arizona attorney.

Funding is the step most people never finish. A Trust only controls assets that are titled in its name (or that name it by beneficiary designation). Signing creates the container; funding fills it. Unfunded assets generally go through probate anyway — the exact outcome the Trust was bought to avoid.

You will want a certification of Trust. Under A.R.S. § 14-11013, banks and brokerages can accept a short certification instead of reading the whole document — it proves the Trust exists and who the trustee is while keeping the private terms private.

Your home and the Trust: real property reaches a trust by a deed to the trustee that discloses the beneficiaries and identifies the trust (A.R.S. § 33-404) — the title, any mortgage, community property and the homestead exemption all interact. This one is genuinely a question for an Arizona attorney.

Is it actually finished? A six-question check

If you can answer yes to all six, your online document is far more likely to do its job when it matters:

1. 1Was it executed with Arizona's formalities — for a Will, in writing, signed by you and signed by at least two people who witnessed your signing or your acknowledgment (A.R.S. § 14-2502), ideally with the self-proving affidavit in the statutory form (A.R.S. § 14-2504)?
2. 2For a Trust: has every intended asset been retitled into it — or given a beneficiary designation that matches the plan?
3. 3Do your beneficiary designations (life insurance, retirement accounts) agree with the document instead of quietly overriding it?
4. 4Does the person you named — personal representative or successor trustee — know they were named, and where the original is?
5. 5Are the originals stored safely AND findably — not only inside a vendor's app that you alone can open?
6. 6Has the plan been re-read after major life changes — marriage, divorce, a move into or out of Arizona, a new child?

What happens later — when someone has to use it

For a Trust, the day you die your successor trustee inherits statutory duties immediately — including two 60-day notice clocks under A.R.S. § 14-10813(A) — usually while grieving. The kindest thing you can do today is make sure they will know what they are holding and where to start.

That is the job TrusteeClear was built for: the free role check shows which sections of the Arizona Trust Code speak to your answers, and the organizer extracts what a signed Arizona Trust says — names, dates, provisions — with a source for each. Your successor trustee will not have to figure it out alone.