Don’t try to make your will by e-mail
December 2, 2025
BY Greg Blue
Even though BC’s Wills, Estates and Succession Act (WESA) now allows electronic wills, don’t try to make your will by e-mail or by sending a text. Even an electronic will has to meet the usual formalities needed to make a will, namely signature by the will-maker in the presence of two witnesses who also sign in the presence of the will-maker and each other. The only difference with an electronic will is that the signatures are digital and the will-maker and witnesses can be in each other’s virtual presence.
Under certain circumstances, WESA allows a court to validate an electronic record or a written document as a will or as an alteration to a will when it doesn’t meet these formalities, but a recent case called Paige v Noel shows that just sending an e-mail message to your intended executor about what you want done with your property after you die isn’t going to make it. (“It” meaning your will.)
In Paige v Noel a woman (the “will-maker”) texted her executor to say she intended to “redo” her will to remove one of the beneficiaries and had made an appointment with a notary to do so. She sent an e-mail to the executor nine days later to say that she had seen the notary and during the two weeks it would take to have the new will ready, the current will would stand in the meantime because she didn’t want to run the risk of destroying it in case she died before making a new one.
A month later, the will-maker informed the executor she had not yet made a new will and was going to consult another notary. She made an appointment with a new notary, but cancelled it. Two months after that, the will-maker told a neighbour who was a lawyer that she wanted to make a minor change to her will and asked to have a wills and estates lawyer from the neighbour’s firm call her about it. A few days later she told her adopted son that she had “all of her papers in order and was ready to do what needed to be done” to remove the other beneficiary. On the following day, the will-maker died without having seen the lawyer and without having made a new will.
The deceased will-maker’s adopted son applied to the court for an order under section 58 of WESA declaring that the two e-mail messages to the executor about making a new will and cutting out a particular beneficiary were effective as an alteration of the original will. The executor supported the son’s application. They were successful at first. The judge who heard the application found that the text and e-mail showed the deceased will-maker had a fixed and final intention to change the will and granted the order. The beneficiary whom the deceased had intended to cut out of her will appealed the decision.
The Court of Appeal reversed the order because it interpreted section 58 of WESA to require that in order to be valid as a will or an alteration of one, a record or document must embody a fixed and final intention on the part of the deceased and must have been intended to operate itself as a will or to change or revoke an existing will. The e-mail message and text to the executor were only communications indicating an intention by the deceased to make a new will with a change in beneficiaries. She did not intend them to serve as an alteration of her will.
The Court of Appeal also had some remarks that anyone thinking of making an informal will should keep in mind. Summing up the effect of earlier cases dealing with section 58, the appeal judgment states “the further a document departs from formal requirements, the harder it will be for a court to find it represents the deceased’s testamentary intention.”
In other words, shortcuts in will-making don’t bring benefits, least of all to your beneficiaries. Have a properly signed and witnessed will. Don’t think you can make your will with a text or e-mail.
