This question is asked because the answer for every other property document is the opposite. A sale deed, a gift deed and a lease beyond a short term all have to be registered or they do not do their job. A will is the exception, and the exception is deliberate.
The statutory position, briefly
The Registration Act, 1908 lists the documents whose registration is compulsory, and a will is not on that list. It then has a separate section setting out documents that may be registered, and wills appear there by name. So registration is permitted and optional. An unregistered will, properly signed and attested, is a good will. A registered will that was badly executed is a bad will. Registration goes to proof, not to validity.
What registration actually gives you
- It fixes the date beyond argument, which matters when there is more than one will and the later one governs.
- It answers an allegation of forgery in a way nothing else does, because the testator appeared before a public officer who recorded the fact.
- It keeps a copy in a public office, so the loss of the original is survivable rather than fatal.
- It makes an argument that the testator was pressured harder to run, because there was a formal step taken in a government office.
Under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 a document which the law requires to be attested cannot be used in evidence until at least one attesting witness has been called, where such a witness is alive and capable of giving evidence. The proviso that excuses registered documents expressly excludes wills. This is the single most common misunderstanding in Indian estate planning. The registration receipt does not replace the witness.
Who may present a will for registration, and when
The Registration Act says the testator, or after his death any person claiming as executor or otherwise under the will, may present it to any Registrar or Sub-Registrar for registration. There is no district restriction of the kind that applies to property documents, and there is no time limit of the kind that applies to a sale deed, which is why a will made twenty years ago can still be registered after the testator's death by the person claiming under it. On such a posthumous presentation the registering officer has to satisfy himself that the will was executed by the testator, that the testator is dead, and that the person presenting it is entitled to do so.
The option most NRIs are never told about
The Act also allows a testator to deposit his will with any Registrar in a sealed cover superscribed with his name and the name of his agent if any, and with a statement of the nature of the document. That deposit may be made personally or by a duly authorised agent, which is the part that matters when you live abroad. On the testator's death, on an application to the Registrar holding the cover, and once he is satisfied the testator is dead, the cover is opened in the applicant's presence, the contents are copied into the register at the applicant's expense, and the original is deposited back.
That is a genuinely useful mechanism for a family spread across countries. It solves the storage problem, which is a real problem, without exposing the contents of the will during your lifetime.
So should you register?
In most cases yes, and the reason is not legal, it is human. Registration forces a date, a place and an official record into existence, and those three things are exactly what a challenger attacks when they are absent. It costs little. The one qualification is that registration requires the testator to appear, so for an NRI it usually has to be timed with a trip to India, and a will that is sitting unsigned while you wait for a convenient trip is far worse than an unregistered will signed this week. Sign first. Register on the next visit. Our guide on making a will in India sets out the sequence.
What to do instead of relying on registration
- Get the execution right. Two independent attesting witnesses, each of whom saw you sign or received your acknowledgement, and each of whom signed in your presence.
- Record the witnesses properly. Full names, addresses, telephone numbers and identity document numbers, in a note kept with the will. Our guide on an NRI will for Indian assets explains why this matters more than the registration stamp.
- Get a capacity note if you are elderly or unwell. A contemporaneous line from a doctor answers the challenge before it is made.
- Tell someone where the original is. A perfect will nobody can find is an intestacy.
- Check you have chosen the right instrument at all. A will takes effect only on death and can be revoked; a transfer during your lifetime cannot be undone as easily. Our comparison of a gift deed, a will and a settlement deed sets out which does what.