Why You Should Never Use ChatGPT to Draft Your Will in India (And What to Do Instead)
Writing a Will with ChatGPT may feel smart and tech‑savvy, but for a document that decides the future of your wealth and family, it is dangerous and should be firmly avoided.
A Will is not a template, it is your last instruction
A Will is not just a form to be filled; it is a legally enforceable statement of intent that must survive attacks, scrutiny, and emotion long after you are gone. It has to comply with local succession laws, execution formalities, tax rules, and family realities—none of which an AI model truly understands in your specific context.
In the Indian context, there are already warning signs of how blindly using ChatGPT‑style tools for legal drafting can backfire. Indian courts have had to deal with AI‑generated fake citations and non‑existent case laws being relied upon in proceedings, prompting sharp criticism from the Bombay High Court and caution from the Karnataka High Court against over‑reliance on AI outputs without human verification. At the same time, inheritance disputes in India frequently arise from ambiguous wording, unclear intentions, and technical defects in Wills—issues that a generic AI model, unaware of the nuances of Indian succession law and family dynamics, is particularly likely to worsen rather than solve. Together, these trends show that when Indian lawyers and citizens outsource serious legal writing to AI, the result is not efficiency but a higher risk of invalid documents, avoidable litigation, and erosion of trust in both the justice system and the very idea of written agreements.
Why generic AI cannot handle inheritance‑specific clauses
Good Wills are built around inheritance logic, not just names and percentages. A generic AI drafter often overlooks crucial, dispute‑preventing clauses such as:
What happens if a beneficiary dies before you (substitution / per stirpes provisions).
Clear treatment of unequal gifts so that they are not later alleged as “unfair” or “suspicious”.
Directions for business interests, ancestral property, HUF interests, and jointly held or NRI assets.
Residual Clause
No Compete Clause and the list goes on …
These are not optional extras; they are core mechanisms that ensure your assets actually reach the right people, in the right way, at the right time.
Good drafting practices AI does not truly apply
Experienced Will drafters use discipline and foresight that AI, working only on patterns, cannot reliably replicate. Some examples of human‑driven good practice include:
Avoiding vague language like “fair share” or “as they see fit”, which courts and heirs fight over.
Checking every clause against the rest of the Will to remove contradictions and gaps.
Building in fallback plans for executors, guardians, trustees, and alternate beneficiaries.
AI can produce text that looks neat, but it never sits down and asks, “If X happens 10 years later, will this clause still work or create chaos?”
Why inheritance disputes happen – and why AI won’t save you
Most estate disputes arise not only when there is no Will, but when there is a weak or unclear Will. Common triggers include:
Ambiguous or conflicting clauses.
Unexplained unequal treatment between children or branches of the family.
Missing instructions for particular assets, business interests, or dependants.
Doubts about validity, capacity, or undue influence.
AI does not understand cultural expectations, family politics, or typical litigation patterns in inheritance cases, so it cannot proactively draft around them.derebus+2
A trained estate‑planning professional, on the other hand, designs clauses specifically to defuse exactly these known triggers.lesteraldridge+1
The illusion of safety: “It looks professional”
AI‑generated Wills often look impressive—clean headings, numbered clauses, legal‑sounding words. That appearance creates a false sense of security, because the defects emerge only when:
The Will is presented for probate.
A disappointed heir challenges it.
A court has to interpret a vague or contradictory clause.
At that point, you are no longer around to clarify what you “actually meant”, and your family pays for the gap between appearance and legal reality.
Hallucinations and fake legal certainty
AI systems are known to “hallucinate”—confidently producing imaginary laws, cases, or clauses that sound convincing but are simply wrong. When such hallucinations enter a Will, they can:
Introduce unenforceable or contradictory terms.
Refer to non‑existent concepts or procedures.
Confuse executors, courts, and beneficiaries about what should actually happen.
The danger is not just minor drafting flaws; it is structurally defective documents that can push your estate into years of litigation.
The privacy problem: your life story in a public model
To draft a serious Will, you must reveal your entire financial and personal map: asset details, account structures, business information, family conflicts, vulnerable dependants, and sometimes deeply sensitive relationships. Feeding this into a general AI tool raises serious privacy and data‑protection issues:
Your data may be stored, logged, or used for further model training, depending on the platform’s policies.
There is no attorney–client privilege; if that information is exposed, you do not have the legal protections you would with a lawyer.
Cross‑tool and cross‑session data can be combined to infer your net worth, patterns, and vulnerabilities.
Estate planning is one of the few areas where confidentiality is as important as the text itself, and open AI tools are simply not designed to meet legal‑grade privacy standards.
No accountability when things go wrong
If a lawyer or professional drafts your Will negligently, there is a name, a license, and often professional indemnity behind that mistake. If an AI tool drafts your Will, no one is responsible when:
The Will is rejected or partially invalid in court.
A clause triggers tax or regulatory consequences you never intended.
Your family ends up in a dispute that consumes years and money.
All the risk lies with the very people you were trying to protect—your beneficiaries.
How AI can be used
AI is not completely useless in estate planning—it is just not a drafter. You may use it to:
Learn basic concepts and terminology.
Prepare an asset list or a list of questions to ask your estate‑planning professional.
Understand the broad differences between tools like Wills, trusts, and nominations.
But the actual drafting, customisation, and legal validation of your Will must rest with a qualified human who understands inheritance law, dispute patterns, and your specific family situation.
Your last word deserves a human mind
A Will is often the last and most powerful sentence you speak in law. Trusting that sentence to a prediction engine that does not know your law, your relationships, or your risks is not efficient—it is a gamble with your legacy. For routine content, AI may be good enough. For a legal document that decides whether your family finds clarity or conflict after you, “good enough” is simply not acceptable.