Often it is necessary to estimate a date of an event. If you have to approximate a date of birth, marriage, or death, indicate your reason in your notes or sources. If you are estimating a marriage at twenty-one and using that and the year of marriage to arrive at an approximate year of marriage, indicate your reasoning as a part of your “source” for the birth year. Otherwise what was a “guess” can easily become a “fact.” If you are using the date of execution [MJN note: this should have been “proof or recording” see note below]of a will as a “dead by” date, you still need to indicate what made you think it was a “dead by” date–and don’t confuse a “dead by” date with an actual date of death.
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The date of execution is the date the will was SIGNED by the testator–which would be a good “last alive” date. The original blog post contained a typo that was not caught in editing and thanks to our readers for pointing it out–Michael.
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I wouldn't use the will execution date as a “dead by” date, as the testator would of course have been alive when he/she signed the will. Better to use the probate date.