Your Family. Your Assets. Your Plan.
In the Lake Norman area, if you haven’t written a will, the state has already written one for you.
We don’t just fill out templates. We are litigators who have seen wills fail in court. We use our experience to draft ironclad documents that replace the state’s default formula with your specific wishes.
People in the Lake Norman area are building real lives—buying homes near the water in Mooresville, starting businesses in Cornelius, raising kids in Huntersville and Davidson. But most of them haven’t written a will. And if something happens before they do, North Carolina doesn’t just leave things up in the air. The state steps in with its own plan under N.C. General Statute § 29-14—and it’s almost certainly not the one you’d have chosen.
A will is how you replace that plan with your own. At Robbins Law Firm, helping families get that document right is what we do every day.
If you have kids and you die without a will, a judge decides who raises them. That judge has never met your family. They don't know who you trust, who shares your values, or who your children already love. A will is the only place in North Carolina law where you get to make that call yourself. That fact alone is enough for most parents to pick up the phone.
Your home, your savings, your car, your personal belongings—anything without a named beneficiary passes through your will. Without one, N.C.G.S. § 29-14 divides things up according to a formula the state wrote, not you. Your spouse gets a share, your kids get a share, and an unmarried partner—no matter how long you've been together—gets nothing automatically.
Someone has to settle your estate: gather your accounts, pay your debts, notify people, and make sure everything gets where it's supposed to go. If you name an executor in your will, that's your person. If you don't, the court picks one for you.
We’ve Seen What Happens Without a Solid Plan, Which Motivates Our Dedication To Create Workable Ones
Here’s something most people don’t realize: a will can be perfectly clear about your wishes and still be thrown out if it wasn’t signed and witnessed correctly. Under N.C. General Statute § 31-3.3, a properly executed will needs to be signed by you and witnessed by at least two people who also sign it in your presence.
North Carolina does allow handwritten wills—called holographic wills—with no witnesses required under N.C.G.S. § 31-3.4. But handwritten wills get contested far more often. Vague wording, missing dates, a sentence that made perfect sense to the person writing it and confuses everyone else—these are the kinds of things that turn a family’s grief into a courtroom fight.
We’ve seen those fights. We draft to prevent them.
A will is important, but it doesn’t cover everything—and knowing the gaps matters.
Your retirement accounts, your 401(k), your IRA, your life insurance: none of those pass through your will. They go directly to whoever you named as beneficiary on each account, regardless of what your will says. If you named an ex-spouse on a policy ten years ago and never updated it, that’s where the money goes. We review all of that as part of putting together a complete plan.
A will also goes through probate—a court process where a clerk supervises the settlement of your estate. In most North Carolina counties, that’s manageable. But if you own property in more than one county—which is common around Lake Norman, where people often have a lake place in Iredell County and a primary home in Mecklenburg—probate may need to open in each one separately.
If that’s your situation, a revocable living trust might be a smarter starting point. We’ll walk you through the difference and help you figure out what actually fits your life.
See everything we offer on our estate planning service page.
ou can. North Carolina doesn’t require an attorney. But DIY wills—even well-intentioned ones—are the wills most likely to cause problems later. One unclear sentence about who gets the house can cost your family far more in legal fees than a properly drafted will ever would. We’ll always tell you honestly whether you need us.
It might be recognized here under N.C.G.S. § 31-46, but that’s only part of the picture. If you’ve bought property in North Carolina since moving, your old will may not cover it. Your power of attorney almost certainly needs updating too. We review relocated plans all the time—it’s a straightforward process.
Your executor takes it to the clerk of superior court in the county where you lived. That starts the probate process—creditors get notified, debts get paid, and what’s left goes to the people you named. How long it takes depends on how complex your estate is and how well-organized your documents are.
A will that names a guardian is essential. But for parents with young children, we often suggest pairing it with a trust—so that any money going to your kids is managed responsibly until they’re old enough to handle it themselves, rather than handed over in a lump sum at eighteen. Our estate planning for minor children page explains how that works.
Not necessarily. It depends on how your property is titled and whether you have children. North Carolina’s default rules can surprise people—especially in blended families, where the numbers don’t always land where anyone expected. A will lets you spell out exactly what you want, so there’s no guessing.
At Robbins Law Firm, we think about wills the way litigators do—because that’s where our roots are. Our team has spent time in North Carolina courtrooms handling trust and estate disputes, and what we saw there shaped how we draft today. We’ve watched plans fall apart over a vague clause, a power of attorney that didn’t say what the family thought it said, a will with a witness problem that made the whole thing unenforceable.
So when we draft a document for you, we’re not just writing down your wishes. We’re thinking about what happens when someone reads it under pressure—when emotions are high and there’s money involved. That’s the standard we hold ourselves to.
The families who come to us for help with probate after losing someone often say the same thing: they wish the person they’re settling the estate for had done this sooner. It’s never as complicated as people expect. And it matters a lot more than most people realize.
