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

If you made a Will online

Pennsylvania spells out how a Will is executed. Under 20 Pa.C.S. §2502, a Will is in writing and signed by you at the end; a Will signed by mark, or by another person at your direction, also needs two witnesses who sign in your presence. Witnesses' affidavits before a notary can make it self-proved, which spares your family a step at probate (§3132.1). A document you only downloaded is not yet a Will.

Add the self-proving affidavit if you can. Under 20 Pa.C.S. §3132.1, 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. The original Will is what the register of wills probates; a Will may be offered for probate at any time (20 Pa.C.S. §3133), and the register can order a person holding a decedent's Will to deposit it (§3137). 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. Pennsylvania creates a trust only when a settlor with capacity signs a writing that indicates an intention to create the trust and contains its provisions, with a definite beneficiary and a trustee who has duties to perform (20 Pa.C.S. §7732); an oral trust is unenforceable (§7737). If anything about your online Trust's signing is unclear, raise it first with a Pennsylvania 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 20 Pa.C.S. §7790.3, 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: whether to deed your home to the trustee is fact-specific — the title, any mortgage and the inheritance tax all interact — and Pennsylvania has no transfer-on-death deed, so a home passes outside probate only through a funded trust or joint ownership with survivorship. This one is genuinely a question for a Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania's formalities — for a Will, in writing and signed by you at the end (20 Pa.C.S. §2502), ideally made self-proved with the witnesses' affidavits before a notary (§3132.1)?
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 Pennsylvania, 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 a 30-day notice clock under 20 Pa.C.S. §7780.3 that runs from the day they learn of your death — 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 Pennsylvania Uniform Trust Act speak to your answers, and the organizer extracts what a signed Pennsylvania Trust says — names, dates, provisions — with a source for each. Your successor trustee will not have to figure it out alone.