Short answer. Yes. Rule 76, Section 1 of the Rules of Court expressly allows the testator himself to petition, during his own lifetime, for the allowance of his will — this is called ante-mortem probate. It runs alongside the more common after-death route, where an executor, devisee, legatee, or other interested person petitions instead.
What the law says
The testator himself may, during his lifetime, petition the court for the allowance of his will
Rule 76, Section 1 — Who may petition for the allowance of will. Read the full provision →
What ante-mortem probate is
The Rules of Court do not limit probate to something that happens only after a person dies. Rule 76, Section 1 states plainly that "the testator himself may, during his lifetime, petition the court for the allowance of his will." That single sentence is the entire basis for what practitioners call ante-mortem probate — proving a will's due execution and the testator's own capacity while the testator is still alive and able to testify to both in person, rather than leaving those questions to be settled later by people who never saw the will made.
Who else may petition
The same provision also covers the more familiar route: probate after death. It allows "any executor, devisee, or legatee named in a will, or any other person interested in the estate" to petition, at any time after the testator dies, whether the will is in that person's possession, lost, or destroyed. Ante-mortem probate does not replace this — it simply gives the testator an additional, earlier option that nobody else can exercise, because the right to petition during the testator's own lifetime belongs to the testator alone.
Why a testator might do this while alive
Filing for probate before death lets the testator settle, in a single proceeding, questions that would otherwise wait to be raised — and possibly contested — only after the testator can no longer answer them: whether the will was validly executed, whether the testator had the capacity to make it, and whether it is genuinely the testator's own document. Doing this while the testator can still appear personally, explain the will's contents, and respond to any challenge in real time removes much of the uncertainty that probate after death has to resolve without the one person who could have settled it directly.
What this does not decide in advance
Petitioning for probate during one's lifetime does not freeze the will against later changes. A testator who later executes a new will, or revokes the probated one, is not barred from doing so by having gone through this process earlier — nothing in the rule ties a living testator's hands. It also does not excuse the will itself from meeting the same formal requirements any will must meet; probate while alive still asks the court to examine the same execution and capacity questions it would ask after death, just with the testator available to answer them directly.