A Client Asked If He Could Include Blog Posts in His Will — I Said That’s Actually Brilliant

I spoke with a client yesterday — he asked to remain anonymous — but the conversation stuck with me. He wasn’t wealthy. No sprawling estate, no complicated trust work. Just a thoughtful man in his late fifties who had written a personal blog for over a decade. No ads. No followers to speak of. But it mattered to him.

As we reviewed his estate plan, I mentioned something that often surprises people: once a will is probated, it typically becomes a public record. In most jurisdictions, that means it’s filed with the court, scanned, archived, and preserved — often permanently. Some courts still use microfilm; others store digital files on long-term archival servers. Either way, once it’s filed, it’s filed. It stays.

I told him, “Your will is essentially a state-backed time capsule.”

He sat with that idea for a moment, then asked, “Can I put my blog in it?”

I said, “Theoretically? Sure. I don’t see why not.”

Wills are, at their core, legal instructions for how to distribute your estate. But they can carry more than instructions. A will can include personal reflections, letters, even attachments like essays or statements of intent. These elements don’t have the same legal force as the bequests, but if submitted with the will, they are often preserved as part of the probate record. Scanned in, stored, and, in many cases, retained indefinitely.

So now, this client is writing again — not for followers, not for engagement, but for preservation. He told me he’s using his blog as a kind of running commentary on the times. His thoughts on life in 2025. His growing discomfort with digital noise and phone addiction. His frustrations with politics and polarization. Reflections on aging. Thoughts on the absurdity of AI-generated everything. Some of it is angry, some curious, most of it unfiltered — just the way he sees the world.

And eventually, when the time comes, all of it — or whatever he chooses — can be preserved in the same folder as his will. A permanent record. A man’s own writing, filed into the archive of a courthouse, not for legal enforcement but for human remembrance.

What struck me most is that he doesn’t think anyone will necessarily read it. That’s not the point. The point is that it won’t be erased. It will exist somewhere. And someone, someday, might find it.

We don’t always think of wills this way. Most people approach them as dry paperwork — a list of distributions, a naming of beneficiaries, a designation of authority. But your will can carry more weight if you choose. It can contain your voice, not just your instructions. It can be a reflection of your time and place — a subtle kind of historical record, one the state will, ironically, pay to preserve.

There’s a certain poetry to that. The same government that collects your estate tax and demands a probate fee will also hold your thoughts in its vault, indefinitely — or at least until the court system collapses. And eventually, it will. No government lasts forever. No legal archive is truly permanent. But for now, these records are among the longest-lasting documents we produce as a society. And you have access to them.

So if you’ve lived through something worth saying, or if you simply want to be remembered on your own terms, say it in your will. Or attach a letter. Or include a statement. Or a blog. There’s no law against it. In fact, the law will help preserve it.

Because when the bank accounts are closed, and the house is sold, and the last asset is distributed, what remains may be your words — and a glimpse of what the world looked like through your eyes.

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