But the curiosity surrounding Ms. Lee’s will extended beyond the question of how much her estate — thought to amount to tens of millions of dollars — is actually worth. Also of keen interest is how her assets are to be distributed. Ms. Lee never married and had no children. Her closest living relatives are nieces and nephews.

After the death of her sister Alice in 2014, she had increasingly relied on the counsel and companionship of her lawyer, Tonja Carter, who was the trustee of her estate and the person who said she discovered the manuscript for “Watchman” in a bank safe deposit box.

Ms. Carter became a controversial figure because of fears she had allowed publishers to persuade Ms. Lee to publish a second book, something the author had long said she had no intention of doing. But Ms. Lee told friends the decision to publish had been hers, and friends of both women have defended Ms. Carter’s care of the aging author.

The motion to seal the will from public view was filed Monday by a Birmingham law firm on behalf of Ms. Carter, acting as the estate’s trustee. In court papers, Scott E. Adams, a lawyer from the firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, said, “It is not the public’s business what private legacy she left for the beneficiaries of her will.”

Probate Judge Greg Norris of Monroe County agreed and signed an order to seal the documents the same day.