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Unsent Text On Mobile Counts As a Will, Australian Court Finds (abc.net.au)
A court in Australia has accepted an unsent, draft text message on a dead man's mobile phone as an official will. The 55-year-old man had composed a text message addressed to his brother, in which he gave "all that I have" to his brother and nephew. From a report: The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard the 55-year-old took his own life in October 2016, after composing a text addressed to his brother, which indicated his brother and nephew should "keep all that I have," because he was unhappy with this wife. A friend found the text message in the drafts folder of the man's mobile phone, which was found near his body. The unsent message detailed how to access the man's bank account details and where he wanted his ashes to be buried.
Depends on the legal jurisdiction, but in 1948, a Saskatchewan farmer became trapped under his tractor, and scratched a short will into the bumper of his tractor. This survived court challenges, and that bumper is now on display of the library at the law courts. More info can be found here.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
The unsent element of this is very troubling. IANAL, but in my Business Law class much time was spent on the significance of offers and counteroffers actually being sent to be admissible and enforceable. An unsent text/email is the snail mail equivalent of a letter printed but not mailed. The act of mailing/sending puts a "finished" stamp on the communication that makes it one's official communication. It can be revised after the fact but releasing it make it official in a very special way. If this could stand, a person could go back and reference past auto-saved versions of a document. Since the document had been modified once, what is to say it could have been modified again? There has to be a marker that says "The version is complete" and a draft document simply doesn't have that.