How Many People Have a Will? Estate Planning Statistics and What They Really Mean

Most American adults do not have a will. In the Caring.com 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study, 24 percent of Americans said they had one, down from 33 percent in 2022. There is no reliable California-only version of this number, and the more useful question is not who has a document, but who has a document that would actually work.

The numbers

The survey was fielded by Caring.com with YouGov among more than 2,500 U.S. adults aged 18 and over. Any page quoting a California-only percentage is extrapolating from national data, not citing a real state survey.

What the national figure does and does not tell you

The 24 percent figure comes from the Caring.com annual study, which has run for years and is the most commonly cited source on this question.

It deserves a caveat the headlines usually drop. A fall from 33 percent to 24 percent over three years is more likely to reflect a change in how the question was asked or who was sampled than a genuine collapse in estate planning. Read it as roughly a quarter to a third of American adults depending on survey year and wording, and be skeptical of anyone building a story out of the year-over-year movement. That includes this page.

The age pattern is more stable and more useful. Adults 55 and over generally have documents in place, and the 35 to 54 group is the largest one without them. That is precisely the cohort with minor children, mortgages, and aging parents.

There is no reliable California-only figure for will or trust ownership. Nobody runs a state-level version of this survey at meaningful scale, and any article or law firm page citing a specific California percentage is doing arithmetic on top of the national number rather than reporting something measured here.

Why people put it off

The survey’s own answer is the plainest one. Among people without a will, 43 percent said they just haven’t gotten around to it. The next most common answer was not having enough assets to bother. Close to a quarter said nothing would ever motivate them to make one.

What I see in practice lines up with that. The process feels expensive and open-ended before anyone has priced it out. People do not know what the first meeting involves, so they picture something longer and more invasive than it is. And nobody wants to be the one who picks a guardian for their children, so that single decision stalls the whole project.

A will, a trust, and a plan are three different things

A will is a set of instructions for the probate court. It does not avoid probate. That is the point most people have never heard: having a will means the estate still goes through probate, it just goes through on your terms instead of the default rules that apply when someone dies without one. See who inherits in California for what those default rules actually do.

A living trust is built to avoid probate for the assets inside it. The condition attached is funding. A trust only controls the assets that have actually been retitled into it, and a trust sitting in a drawer while the house is still held individually does nothing. See trust funding for how often that goes wrong.

A plan is more than either document. It generally includes durable powers of attorney, an advance health care directive, beneficiary designations that match the rest of the plan, and guardianship nominations for minor children.

What a working plan usually includes

• A will
• A living trust, if the assets warrant one
• The trust actually funded, meaning assets retitled into it
• A durable power of attorney
• An advance health care directive
• Beneficiary designations that match the plan
• A guardianship nomination for minor children
• A review after any major life change

Who is most exposed

Probate exposure is a function of asset value and how title is held, not of overall wealth. A modest income and an appreciated house can trigger the same process as a much larger estate, which is why the national adoption figures understate the stakes in a high property value state.

Blended families face gaps a generic will often does not address. See blended family estate planning.

Anyone recently divorced should assume their existing documents no longer say what they think they say. See estate planning after divorce.

Parents of minor children are exposed in a specific way. Without a guardianship nomination, a court decides who raises the children if something happens to both parents.

People carrying documents from another state, or from before a marriage, a divorce, or the birth of a child, are often working from a plan that no longer matches their life or this state’s rules. And anyone relying on the assumption that a spouse automatically inherits everything is relying on something that is not reliably true.

How we know this

National adoption figures come from the Caring.com 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study, fielded with YouGov among more than 2,500 U.S. adults, retrieved July 25, 2026, and the most recent edition published as of that date. Survey data of this kind measures self-reported document ownership, meaning whether someone says they have a will or trust, not whether that document is funded, current, or would work as intended. No comparable California-only dataset exists, which is why every California-specific statement on this page is stated as inference rather than as a measured figure.

This page is part of Estate Planning Statistics and California Guides, Ridley Law’s reference library on California probate and estate planning.

Talk to Ridley Law

If you are not sure whether your current documents still do what you think they do, the first step is an unhurried meeting, in person or by video, to look at your family and your assets before anyone drafts anything. Ridley Law will tell you plainly whether your plan needs work or whether it is fine as it stands. Talk to Eric.