Short answer. No. A later change in the law does not affect whether your will was validly executed. Article 795 fixes formal validity at the moment the will is made: the validity of a will as to its form depends upon the observance of the law in force at the time it is made.
What the law says
The validity of a will as to its form depends upon the observance of the law in force at the time it is made.
Civil Code, Article 795 — Formal Validity Is Fixed at Execution. Read the full provision →
The law at signing is the law that judges the form
Article 795 answers the worry directly. The formal validity of a will — the number of witnesses, the way it must be signed, the attestation and notarial requirements — is measured against the law that was in force at the time it is made. If your will satisfied the formalities on the day you executed it, a statute passed afterward that tightens or loosens those formalities does not reach back to undo it. Nor can a later law be used to attack a will that already complied. The date of execution locks in the formal standard the will will be tested against for good.
Why the rule protects the testator
The reason is fairness and certainty. When you make a will you follow the rules you can actually see — the ones in force that day. It would be unjust to invalidate a document, often decades later, for failing to meet formalities that did not exist when it was signed. Once the maker has died the will can no longer be re-executed to catch up with new requirements, so the law freezes the test at the moment the testator still had the power to comply. This gives every person the confidence that a will drawn up correctly today cannot be formally voided by a change of law tomorrow.
What the rule does not cover
This protection is about form, not about substance. Article 795 does not freeze the rules on who may inherit, the shares reserved for compulsory heirs, or the intrinsic validity of what the will disposes — those can be governed by the law in force at the testator's death. It also does not save a will that was defective in form to begin with; if the formalities were missed on the day of signing, no later law cures that either. And a validly executed will can still be revoked, revised, or partly reduced for other reasons entirely separate from formal validity.
What this means in practice
If someone challenges a will by pointing to a formality required only under a newer statute, that challenge misreads the law. The correct question is always whether the will observed the formalities in force on its execution date. Keep the will dated, keep proof of when and how it was signed and witnessed, and the formal-validity inquiry becomes straightforward. Because disputes often turn on exactly which law applied and when the document was made, the surrounding evidence of the execution date can be decisive, and it is worth preserving carefully.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Testate Estate of the Late Alipio Abada, et al. vs. Alipio Abaja, et al, G.R. No. 147145, January 31, 2005 — read the decision on LawPhil →