• Joint wills must be carefully planned to be properly executed.husband and wife image by jimcox40 from Fotolia.com
  
  In the state of Georgia, joint wills are legally valid and accepted by probate courts as long as they are put together properly. Creating a joint will can be much more complicated than creating a will for only one individual because not only is the will jointly owned, but some of the property may be jointly owned as well. Georgia also recognizes another type of will called mutual will that is somewhat different from a joint will. Georgia law explains in detail the requirements and prohibitions associated with joint wills and joint ownership of property.
  
  

General Information

• Whether a will is for individual, joint or mutual ownership, certain rules apply. The testator(s) is/are the owner(s) of the will and may choose to dispense his, her or their assets in whatever manner explained in the text of the will. The will is executed upon the deaths of each individual testator unless otherwise noted in the will or in Georgia law. This means that once one testator dies, the testator's part of the will be dispensed immediately to the living beneficiaries and, once the final living testator has died, the will will go into probate proceedings to dispense the remaining assets.
  
  

Mutual Will Vs. Joint Will

• A joint will is one will that is signed by two or more testators that deals with the distribution of the assets and property of each of the testators. During probate, the joint will can be considered as each individual testator's will, according to their respective deaths. This means that when one testator dies, the joint will is used to dispense that person's estate and when another dies, that same joint will is used to dispense that person's estate. Mutual wills are separate for all of the testators involved, meaning each testator gets his own will, though the contents of the wills may deal with more than one testator.
  
  

Joint Ownership and Other Laws

• Joint-owned property, unless otherwise stated in the will, will immediately pass on to the remaining owner(s) in the event of the death of one owner. When a joint will or mutual wills are executed, this action does not constitute a contract stating that the wills cannot be revoked. Any one of the mutual wills or any part of the joint will may still be revoked if a valid cause is presented. A joint will or mutual wills may be revoked by any one of the testators in the same manner as an individual will without having an effect on the other testators. If two or more testators die simultaneously, then their assets will be dispensed as if each individual had survived.