In 2025, the North Carolina General Assembly introduced House Bill 377 at the request of the North Carolina Bar Association to authorize electronic wills. While the bill, at face value, represented a meaningful step toward modernizing estate planning law, its approach raised significant concerns among stakeholders in the digital estate planning industry.
As introduced, HB 377 authorized electronic wills but departed significantly from the framework adopted by the 17 states and the District of Columbia that currently recognize them. The bill required electronic wills to be signed by the testator and attested by at least two competent witnesses, mirroring North Carolina’s traditional will-execution formalities. However, unlike electronic will statutes enacted in many other jurisdictions, HB 377 did not authorize remote online notarization (RON) for witness participation. As a result, witnesses still would have been required to execute the will using traditional “wet ink” procedures rather than participate remotely through a fully digital process.
The bill also authorized self-proving electronic wills but omitted several modern safeguards commonly incorporated into electronic wills statutes in other states. These protections typically include identity verification, audiovisual recording of the execution ceremony, tamper-evident technology, and multi-factor authentication designed to enhance security and reduce the risk of fraud or undue influence.
The Legacy Innovation & Estate Planning Coalition (LIVE), a national coalition representing the digital estate planning industry, opposed the bill on the grounds that it would create unnecessary barriers to execution and reduce the likelihood that consumers would successfully complete their estate planning documents.
LIVE acknowledged and appreciated the North Carolina Bar Association’s efforts to thoughtfully study electronic wills and pursue an incremental implementation strategy. However, the coalition argued that the proposed model was fundamentally flawed because it would make estate planning more difficult, not easier, for consumers seeking accessible digital solutions.
The potential implications extended beyond North Carolina. LIVE warned that enactment of the bill in its original form could have created a problematic legislative precedent for other states considering electronic wills legislation. Such a development risked slowing broader nationwide adoption of comprehensive digital estate planning frameworks. Ultimately, those concerns were addressed during the legislative process. The Senate policy committee adopted a committee substitute removing the electronic wills language from HB 377 entirely.
For LIVE, the committee substitute represents an important policy outcome because it avoided creating a legislative model that other states might have replicated, potentially slowing momentum toward broader nationwide adoption of comprehensive digital estate planning laws.
As more states continue evaluating electronic wills legislation, the debate surrounding HB 377 underscores the importance of balancing consumer protection with technological functionality. The outcome in North Carolina may ultimately serve as a reminder that partial modernization efforts can unintentionally hinder adoption if they fail to fully integrate the tools that make digital execution both secure and practical.
