Do I Need a Will in My 20s?

Probably, yes. And I know that sounds insane.

You're 25. You've got a car worth less than your student loans, a savings account that made you cry last Tuesday, and a Roth IRA a coworker guilt-tripped you into opening. A will feels like a thing for people with beach houses and grandkids. It isn’t.

A will isn't about being rich. It's about being the one who decides. Right now, if something happens to you, a stranger in a courtroom decides instead, using a rulebook written before you were born.

Most American adults don't have a will.^[1] Almost none of them are 25. That's not because young people don't need one. It's because nobody ever brings it up, and then something happens, and their family finds out the hard way.

Here's the part nobody explains. If you die without a will, you don't avoid the paperwork. You just don't get a say in it.

Every state has a backup plan for this, called intestacy law. It's a fixed list of who inherits, in what order, and it's the same list for everyone in your state. Married with no kids? Usually your spouse, sometimes split with your parents. Single with no kids? Usually your parents, then your siblings.^[2]

That list is blood and marriage. Full stop. It doesn't care who actually shows up for you.

And someone has to walk it through court. Which means at the exact moment your family is falling apart, one of them is filling out forms, calling a courthouse, and waiting on hold. That person is usually your mom.

This is the part that should actually get your attention. Under intestacy law, these people get nothing, no matter how much they mean to you:

• Your partner, if you're not married. Living together for six years doesn't count. Being engaged doesn't count. In most states they are legally a stranger to your estate.
• Your best friend. The one who'd actually take the dog.
• Your chosen family. If you're estranged from your biological family and built your own, the state doesn’t know that. It will hand everything to the people you stopped speaking to.
• Anyone you'd want to skip. Intestacy runs on the family tree, not on your feelings about it.

A will is how you overrule that list. It's the only way.

Same goes for your dog. Pets are legally property, so they pass like a couch does. If you want a specific person to get your animal, you have to say so in writing.

"I don't have an estate" is the number one reason people your age skip this. You do. An estate is just everything you own and everything you owe. There's no minimum. Some estates are negative numbers.

Take an actual inventory:

• Your car, even the one that makes that noise.
• Checking, savings, whatever's in Venmo and Cash App.
• Your 401(k) and Roth IRA, which are probably worth more than you think.
• Crypto and brokerage accounts. If nobody can find your keys, that money is gone forever. Not tied up. Gone.
• Life insurance through your job. A lot of people have a policy worth a year of salary and have no idea.
• Your photos, your accounts, your camera roll. Ten years of your life lives there.

Two things to know about that list. First, some of it skips your will entirely. Retirement accounts and life insurance go to whoever you named as beneficiary, and that name beats anything your will says. Go look at those forms. A shocking number of people have an ex sitting in that field.

Second, your online accounts have their own rules. Most states have adopted a law that gives an executor limited access to digital accounts, and the big platforms have their own tools, like Apple's Digital Legacy, Google's Inactive Account Manager, and Facebook memorialization.^[3] You can set those up in about ten minutes tonight.

Here's the thing nobody tells 20-somethings. There are two documents that matter more than your will, because they work while you're alive.

A will only does anything after you die. But the far more likely scenario at your age isn't dying. It's a car accident, an overdose, a bad reaction, a week in the ICU where you can’t speak for yourself.

An advance directive says what medical care you want when you can't say it out loud, and names the person who decides for you. Without one, doctors turn to your legal next of kin, which is your spouse or your parents. Not your partner of six years. Not your best friend. There are couples who found this out in a hospital hallway.

A power of attorney lets someone handle your money while you're alive but incapacitated. Rent, phone bill, car payment. Without it, your family may have to go to court just to pay your rent.

If you only do one thing after reading this, do the advance directive. It's free in most states and it's the one that protects you while you're still here.

You don’t need a lawyer for a simple estate. If you're single or married, no kids, no business, no property in another state, an online service is fine. Millions of valid wills exist that no lawyer ever touched.

What makes a will legal is boring and specific: you have to be 18 and of sound mind, it has to be in writing, you have to sign it, and almost every state requires two witnesses who aren't named in the will to sign it in front of you. Requirements vary by state, so check yours.^[4]

Do this in one sitting:

• Update your beneficiaries. 401(k), IRA, life insurance. Ten minutes, free, and it overrides your will. Start here.
• Do the advance directive. Name your person. Tell them.
• Write the will. Name who gets what, and name who's in charge of making it happen.
• Set your digital legacy contacts. Apple, Google, Facebook. Ten minutes.
• Tell one person where all of it lives. A perfect will nobody can find is worthless.

Then go live your life. That's the whole point. You do this once in an afternoon, in your 20s, and then you don't think about it again until something changes, like a marriage, a kid, a house, or a breakup.

Doing this isn't morbid and it isn't giving up. It's the same reason you wear a seatbelt. You're not planning to crash. You're just not leaving it to chance, and you're not leaving the mess to the people you love.