We have all been there, staring at our recent credit card statement, fuming over a subscription charge we swear we canceled. We sent an email! We called the customer service line! We clicked that little “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email! But the fine print says we needed to send a handwritten letter via carrier pigeon to Tom in the cancellation department. You wanted to cancel. But you didn’t follow the rules, so you pay the price.

According to the recent holding in Estate of Boyajian (2025) 112 Cal.App.5th 843, the law works the same way when it comes to revoking a will.

This may come as a surprise, but in California, you can’t revoke your will by simply expressing your intent to do so. Rather, Probate Code section 6120 lays out very specific requirements:

A will or any part thereof is revoked by the following:

• A subsequent will (or testamentary instrument) which revokes the prior will; or

• Burning, tearing, cancelling, obliterating, or destroying the old will, either by your own hand or by directing someone else to do so while you are present.

Layla Boyajian learned the hard way that you cannot simply “cancel” your will by signing a document stating so. As a result, her old will “cheated death,” and her estate was sentenced to distribution according to its terms.

In 2006, Layla Boyajian created a handwritten (holographic) will leaving everything to her daughter, Anush, thereby disinheriting her three other children. Twelve years later, in 2018, Layla had a change of heart. She went to her attorney and signed a notarized document which purported to revoke all of her prior estate planning documents.

After Layla’s death in 2020, Anush petitioned to probate the “revoked” 2006 will that left everything to Anush, and her brother Robert contested the petition, claiming Layla had revoked that will by “cancellation” under Probate Code section 6120, subdivision (b) when she signed the notarized “Revocation of Powers of Attorney and Estate Planning Documents.”

The trial court agreed with Robert. It held that the 2018 notarized document validly revoked the 2006 will, determining the document constituted a cancellation, even though no physical act was inflicted or applied directly on the will.

The appellate court, however, reversed the ruling, holding that the 2018 document does not cut it as a valid revocation.

No Destruction, No Revocation: A Lesson From the Gilded Age

Even though Layla may have truly meant to revoke her old will, the court ruled that intentions alone don’t count when it comes to revoking wills. What does count? Action. Physical, dramatic, destructive action. Something “clear-cut” (as in, scissors), “striking” (as in, matches), or “obliterating” (as in, fed to a blender and launched into the cosmic shred bin of dashed inheritance dreams.)

So what is cancellation, in a physical sense? Sure, it could mean to invalidate by any means, the court reckoned – but not in this century (nor the last, nor the one before that.) Ten score and seven years ago, the California Supreme Court determined that cancellation of a will, “in its primal significance,” requires a “lattice work” or “criss-cross” drawn on top of preexisting text. (See Estate of Olmsted (1898) 122 Cal. 224) And per the appellate court in Boyajian, that is still good law. No lattice work = no cancellation.

Revocation pursuant to subdivision (b) requires a physical act done to destroy the old will.

Revocation by New Will: Not So Simple Either

If you’re not in the mood to go full demolition, you can opt for revocation by subdivision (a). But a signed document stating “I revoke my will” isn’t enough, unless it’s part of a new, valid will. And a will, the 2018 document, was not. The 2018 document did not actually dispose of any of Layla’s property upon Layla’s death, nor did it comply with the formalities of the creation of a will. While the harmless error doctrine may apply to the creation of a will, no such liberty is afforded to revocation of an old one – not in California anyway.

The bottom line? If you want to revoke your will, be sure to comport with the legal formalities. In California, that means you must destroy the old will physically or replace it with a new, properly executed will. Whichever method you decide, we recommend talking to a qualified attorney before attempting to revoke anything. Because when it comes to your estate, intention without execution can leave your wishes—and your loved ones—in legal limbo.