Every person eighteen (18) years of age or older, being of sound and disposing mind, shall have power, by last will and testament, or codicil in writing, to devise all the estate, right, title and interest in possession, reversion, or remainder, which he or she hath, or at the time of his or her death shall have, of, in, or to lands, tenements, hereditaments, or annuities, or rents charged upon or issuing out of them, or goods and chattels, and personal estate of any description whatever, provided such last will and testament, or codicil, be signed by the testator or testatrix, or by some other person in his or her presence and by his or her express direction. Moreover, if not wholly written and subscribed by himself or herself, it shall be attested by two (2) or more credible witnesses in the presence of the testator or testatrix.
Miss. Code Ann. § 91-5-1
Who may execute; signature; attestation
Applied in 34 court decisions — leading case Madden v. Rhodes (1993)
Most recently applied in Victor Daren Froemel v. Danny Williams (May 2018)
Codes, Hutchinson’s 1848, ch. 49, art. 1 (14); 1857, ch. 60, art. 34; 1871, § 2388; 1880, § 1262; 1892, § 4488; 1906, § 5078; Hemingway’s 1917, § 3366; 1930, § 3550; 1942, § 657…
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Mississippi Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Mississippi statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.