Tennessee Statute on Will Execution Amended to Permit Signatures on Affidavit of Will to Satisfy Witness Signature Requirement for Wills Executed Prior to July 1, 2016.
The Tennessee legislature passed a law effective July 1, 2016, to address and overrule a recent Tennessee Court of Appeals decision that disallowed the enforcement of a will in which the witnesses had signed the affidavit attached to the will rather than the will itself. The Tennessee Court of Appeals decision was in the case of In Re: Estate of Bill Morris, 2015 WL 557970 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2015), which we covered in a prior legal update. The Court in the Morris case held the will was not valid where the witnesses signed only the