What a codicil cannot do

A codicil does not appoint heirs. Who receives the estate as a whole follows from the statute or from a will, not from a handwritten list of things. Since 2003 the appointment of an executor likewise belongs in a will. A sentence on a codicil that makes someone executor does not confer that role. In the file you copy that sentence as text that is on the paper. You do not give that person the role of executor on the basis of that sheet alone. Whether a will does name an executor is a separate question, with the deed as the source. Ervazo does not assign the role because a family member reads the codicil that way. The program keeps the boundary between a list of things and an appointment.

A codicil cannot leave money, a house, a car or investments. A line that names a bank account, a home, a registration number or a securities portfolio does not assign that entry. The entry stays in the estate inventory until the statute or the will says who receives it. You do not take it out of the estate because the codicil names it. Do note that the sheet contains that wish, so that the notary can read the sentence. The wish and a valid allocation are two rules. Only the second changes who is entitled. An amount on a slip of paper is not a codicil about money, however precisely the figure is written down. The same applies to a sentence about the home or about the car on the drive.

Even for goods that a codicil can name, a vague rule fails. The items must be specified. A sentence such as my children share the jewelry designates no ring, no chain and no watch. Those pieces of jewelry remain ordinary entries in the estate inventory, unless a will allocates them otherwise. The same applies to a sentence about my books or about the household contents for my sister, without naming the items. Write in the file that the codicil does not specify the goods, and leave the allocation empty. Do not invent a division as if each child receives an equal part of a box. Equal parts do not rescue a sentence that is too broad. Specification is a requirement of the paper, not a stylistic choice by the reader.

Lay the codicil next to the will and keep those two papers apart. What the codicil can leave are certain clothes, personal jewelry, certain household goods and certain books. It can also say that precisely those items stay outside a marital community of property. Everything else, such as heirs, an executor, money, a house, a car or investments, belongs in a will if the maker wanted that. Ervazo keeps the sheet and notes the boundary. It makes no will and it does not repair a sentence that falls outside the codicil.