How First Light Works
From your state’s law to your signature line.
First Light does not ask you to trust a black box. We show the official source behind every published state-law rule, record when it was verified, version every change to our legal data, and stop rather than generate a document that has not cleared our verification standard.
Answer about 20 questions about your family, property, and wishes. Before you pay, you see the issues your answers raise and the legal authority behind each state-specific finding. If a document has not cleared our verification gate for your state, we do not sell or generate it.
Answer the check
About 20 questions about your family, your property, and your wishes. Where an answer opens another question — minor children, a blended family, property in another state — a follow-up asks it.
See what the law says
Your plan separates state-specific legal findings from general planning best practices. Every state-specific legal finding shows its citation and source, so you can read the authority yourself.
Prepare your documents
For the documents First Light supports in your state, you get the document plus signing instructions built from the same state rules — how many witnesses, whether a notary is required, and the execution details that matter at signing.
Follow one rule from the statute to your signature line.
Here is the whole system, shown once, on one real rule. Pick a different state at stop 3 and watch it re-rack.
01The statute
Except as otherwise provided by law, a will must be: (1) in writing; (2) signed by: (A) the testator in person; or (B) another person on behalf of the testator: (i) in the testator's presence; and (ii) under the testator's direction; and (3) attested by two or more credible witnesses who are at least 14 years of age and who subscribe their names to the will in their own handwriting in the testator's presence.
02What First Light records
A rule cannot publish at all without its citation and source link — a requirement enforced by the database, not by editorial policy.
03Your answer
Try it — pick a different state, and the whole trace re-racks to that state’s rule.
This one answer selects the Texas execution profile — the ruleset that governs how your documents must be signed.
04What the product does
Sign in the presence of two adult witnesses at the same time. Each witness then signs in your presence and in each other's presence. Witnesses should not be beneficiaries.
The witness count resolves from the state execution profile. Signing guidance is separately authored and tested against the profile for consistency.
05The record
Retire, never delete: prior versions are retained, so we can identify exactly which First Light rule was active at a given time.
This is the pattern First Light uses for the state execution rules that drive document behavior. Those rules sit within a corpus of 3,675 structured state-law facts maintained across all 50 states + D.C..
Official evidence. Separate review. Product gate.
Every published state-law rule in First Light traces to official primary legal authority — the statute, code, enacted law, court, agency, or state-authorized publication that supplies the rule. We capture the relevant text with a verbatim excerpt, its citation, source link, and retrieval date. Not a blog post about the law. Not an unofficial mirror of it. The official source, linked so you can read it yourself.
Each fact passes three layers before the product can use it:
In corpus version 0.32, we applied 785 value-preserving official-source and provenance repairs across 40 states. Legal values, review status, and confidence were unchanged; the work is recorded in the public change record below.
Dates, not adjectives.
We do not label a rule “current” and ask you to take our word for it. We show you when it was last verified. Every published rule carries a verification date, and we re-verify on a rolling schedule, state by state — checking official sources for changes and watching state legislative activity for updates that touch the rules we maintain.
When the law changes, we clarify a rule, or we correct an error, we do not silently overwrite the old record. We retire it and version the change. The public record shows what changed, when, where, and why — whether it was a legal update, a clarification, or a correction.
Found something you believe is wrong? Every public rule page includes a way to report it. Reports go to a reviewed queue; corrections that result enter the same versioned record as everything else. The point of a versioned record is not to look error-free. It is to make changes visible.
Prior versions are retained, so we can identify exactly which First Light rule was active at a given time. Every release runs type checks, legal-data validation, and document-generation tests.
When our rules aren’t enough, First Light stops.
When a state or a document has not met our verification standard, First Light does not generate it. There is no generic-document fallback — no template that ships anyway with a disclaimer attached. Generation stops, and the product tells you why and directs you to consult an attorney.
Louisiana is the live example. Its civil-law framework requires a separate ruleset that First Light has not yet cleared for wills, powers of attorney, or healthcare directives. Louisiana planning information and the free companion documents remain available, but First Light does not sell or generate those legal instruments. A Louisiana user reaches that line in the product today.
First Light does not sell Louisiana legal instruments today. We would rather turn away the purchase than generate a document that has not cleared our verification standard.
Documents on hold in Louisiana
First Light hasn’t cleared its Louisiana ruleset for wills, powers of attorney, or healthcare directives. We don’t sell what we can’t verify.
Holds are enforced where documents are generated, server-side. Generation halts with a controlled error; nothing falls back silently.
We’re not a law firm. Here’s the honest boundary.
First Light is not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. We provide published legal information, with official sources and verification dates, and document preparation using the answers you provide. We do not make professional judgments about your particular situation. We can show you who your state’s rules permit to serve as a witness; we cannot tell you which person in your life you should choose.
Our legal research and document templates are reviewed by practicing attorneys, seasoned estate professionals, and First Light's team of legal analysts. That review is scoped rather than blanket — different practitioners review different parts of the system — and we describe it collectively on purpose: attributing it to a single named attorney would misstate how the work is actually done. This review shapes our rules and templates. It does not create an attorney-client relationship with you, and nothing here is legal advice.
Some situations fall outside what First Light supports. When they do, the product says so and directs you to consult an attorney — a Louisiana estate is the clearest example today.
A few practical questions
What's free and what's paid.
The check, your plan, and six companion documents are free. The legal instruments are paid: will $49, financial power of attorney $29, healthcare directive $29, all three $79. One-time pricing — no subscription, no automatic renewal.
After you pay.
Stripe processes the payment. First Light records the purchase and connects it to the matching account when claimed so the documents you bought remain available. If anything fails to connect, the confirmation page gives you a direct path to support (support@planfirstlight.com).
Your data.
Your answers are used to create your plan and documents. Our privacy policy explains what we save, why we save it, how long we keep it, and the service providers involved.
See what your state requires.
Start my free checkThe check is free, takes about 3 minutes, and every state-specific legal finding shows its source.