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

If you made a Will online

Tennessee spells out how a Will is executed. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-1-104, you sign the Will, or acknowledge your signature already made, and signify to two or more attesting witnesses that it is your Will; the witnesses sign in your presence and in the presence of each other. The witnesses may make an affidavit to prove it (Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-2-110). A document you only downloaded is not yet a Will.

Tennessee lets the attesting witnesses make an affidavit before an officer authorized to administer oaths, on or attached to the Will, stating the facts they would testify to; the probate court accepts it in place of their testimony where the Will is not contested (Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-2-110) — so the witnesses need not be found after your death to prove it.

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 mails or delivers it to the personal representative it names, with a copy to the clerk of the probate court, or the original to the clerk where no representative is named, known or willing (Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-1-113); while you live, you may deposit it sealed with the court where the clerk has a vault (Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-1-112). 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. Tennessee 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 (Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-15-402); an oral trust's terms need clear and convincing evidence (Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-15-407); a trust created on or after July 1, 2004 is revocable unless its terms expressly provide that it is irrevocable (Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-15-602), and needs no will's formalities to dispose of property at death (Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-15-601). If anything about your online Trust's signing or its words is unclear, raise it first with a Tennessee 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 Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-15-1013, 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 trust or its trustee, recorded with the register of deeds (Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-24-101) — the title, any mortgage, the homestead set apart for a surviving spouse or child (Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-201) and the spouse's elective share (Tenn. Code Ann. § 31-4-101) all interact. This one is genuinely a question for a Tennessee 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 Tennessee's formalities — for a Will, signed by you, signified as your will to two or more attesting witnesses who sign in your presence and in the presence of each other (Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-1-104)? The witnesses may also make the self-proving affidavit before an officer authorized to administer oaths (Tenn. Code Ann. § 32-2-110).
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 Tennessee, 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 the initial notice within 60 days after acceptance and funding under Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-15-813(b) — 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 Tennessee Uniform Trust Code speak to your answers, and the organizer extracts what a signed Tennessee Trust says — names, dates, provisions — with a source for each. Your successor trustee will not have to figure it out alone.