About Waseeyat
Your legacy, simplified™
Waseeyat™ helps people in India make a will designed to hold up, keep it safe, and leave their family a clear path. We are a technology-enabled will-drafting and succession-planning service. We are not a law firm, and we do not give legal advice.
What we do, and what we do not
What we do
We ask the questions a will needs, apply the rules of the personal law that governs your will, and check your answers for gaps and contradictions before we make a draft. We prepare your will for printing, with a signing kit. A person reviews every AI-assisted draft before it reaches you.
What we are not
We are not a law firm and do not give legal advice. We do not give investment, tax or insurance advice. We do not decide who inherits when a family disagrees. That is for the courts.
A will on paper, always
Indian law does not let a will be signed electronically, and we will never offer it. Your will is printed, then signed by you in ink or with a thumb mark, before two witnesses who also sign (Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 63).
What no one can promise
No website, including Waseeyat, can tell you whether a paper will is valid. Only a court can decide that. No outcome is guaranteed.
Who the guided will is for
Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains; Christians, Parsis, Jews and others; and people married under the Special Marriage Act. The guided will for Muslims is not open yet. It opens after an empanelled advocate has reviewed it. Until then, we offer the fixed-fee advocate review instead.
Your language
You can read the site's menus in English, Hindi or Urdu. Will text in Hindi and Urdu is coming, once a qualified translator has prepared it and a native-speaking advocate has reviewed it.
A will is only as good as the proof behind it
The person relying on a will has to prove that it was properly made, and explain anything about it that looks suspicious. Most of what goes wrong can be prevented on the day it is signed. We built Waseeyat so that a family is not left guessing what someone wanted.
Capacity
The maker must be of sound mind and not a minor (Indian Succession Act, 1925, section 59). If you are 80 or older, or tell us about a serious illness, the kit includes a doctor's fitness certificate to complete on the signing day.
Free will
A will made because of fraud, coercion or pressure that takes away the maker's free will is void (section 61). The kit asks that beneficiaries are not in the room and do not organise the signing.
Signing and witnessing
You sign the will (or put your mark on it), and at least two witnesses attest it, as section 63 requires. To prove the will in court, at least one attesting witness must be called, if one is alive, within the court's reach and able to give evidence (Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, section 67). The kit gives you a witness checklist and an attestation clause.
Suspicious circumstances
A shaky signature, a very feeble state of mind, or gifts that look unnatural or unfair have to be explained before a court accepts the will. The same goes when the person putting the will forward took a prominent part in making it and receives a substantial benefit under it (H. Venkatachala Iyengar v. B. N. Thimmajamma, Supreme Court, 1958).
Changes after signing
A change written on a signed will counts only if it is itself signed and witnessed (section 71). We use a codicil or a new will instead.
A lost original
If the original is lost or destroyed after your death, other than by your own act, a court may grant probate of a copy or draft (section 237). A scan helps, but a court will still need to be told how the original was lost, and to have the signing and witnessing proved (Supreme Court of India: Jagmail Singh v. Karamjit Singh, 13 May 2020; Dhanpat v. Sheo Ram, 19 March 2020). You can record in your account where your original is kept, and keep a scan in your vault.
Independent advocates, fixed fees
Some services are done by an empanelled advocate: a review of your draft, a check of your signed will, and work after a death, such as probate, quoted at a fixed fee before it starts.
Independent
Assigned, never chosen from a list
Fixed fees, never a share
No adverts, no rankings
Your papers stay yours
Most duties under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 start later. We are building to them now, alongside the privacy rules already in force under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Your files open from your account
Your files open only from your own account, and our staff screens never show them. The one exception is the scan of your signed will, explained below. Each file is encrypted with its own key and stored in Mumbai. Our servers in Singapore check and encrypt each file when it is added, and decrypt it only when it is downloaded.
Who can get your will record
We keep a record of how your will was prepared. It is not your will: your will is the paper you sign in ink before two witnesses. You get the record from your own account. After your death, it goes, with the scan of your signed will, to the executor named in your will once we have checked the death and who they are, or to the holder of a grant of probate or letters of administration. At any time, a court or the police can obtain it on a written order. Nobody else can get it.
Nothing else leaves your vault
Apart from that record, nothing in your vault goes to anyone unless you choose to share the scan for an advocate's check of your signed will, or the law requires it. Your executor cannot open your vault, so tell them where the original is.
Consent you can take back
IDs, witnesses' papers, health papers, financial papers and a child's papers each have their own notice, and you agree to it before you add them. You can withdraw your consent at any time, and the files kept for that purpose are deleted. Copies inside our encrypted backups are deleted as those backups expire, within 90 days.
Witnesses decide for themselves
A witness's ID can be added only after that witness agrees. You must not agree on a witness's behalf.
Aadhaar: masked copies only
Add an Aadhaar only as a masked copy, with only the last 4 digits showing. We never use it to confirm who you are, and we never check it with UIDAI, the Aadhaar authority.
No AI in your vault; visits counted only if you agree
No AI reads your vault files. We count visits to the site only if you agree, with our own tools and no third-party analytics.
Waseeyat™, and two lines we live by
Waseeyat™
Two lines we live by
Sunset Literacy: plain guidance, with its sources
Sunset Literacy is our public-education campaign. Its aim is to make it normal for Indian families to talk about the end of life, and to act on it properly. Sunsets are ordinary. Planning for one is an act of care, not fear.
What every page aims to do
The law library
Still being researched
Sunset Sessions
Start with what you need today
Making a will
After a loss
Nominations and your will
Registering or depositing
Where there's a will, there's Waseeyat
Waseeyat is opening soon. New accounts and messages are not being accepted yet.