If you’ve been traveling around the sun for a while, you’ve no doubt heard of a Will, a document that says what happens to your money and belongings after you die. You may even have a Will, or know you should get one. And maybe you’ve heard of a Trust and wondered what it is and how it works. You may have even done research on Google about how to do your own Will or Trust.

In fact, it’s hard to poke around the internet and not find do-it-yourself (“DIY”) Wills and Trusts services. Legal Zoom, TrustandWill.com, and even media personalities Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman offer cheap DIY documents. Heck, you can even create your own Will or Trust for free by downloading a few forms. What these websites won’t do, however, is explain the potential consequences that can happen if you use one of their services.

The truth is that Trusts and Wills, and other documents that all adults should have in place, like a health care directive and power of attorney, are legal documents with legal consequences. They contain lots of legal language. Even if you think you understand the words, you likely don’t fully understand the nuances in the terminology. There’s a reason lawyers have to complete college, graduate from law school, then pass a bar exam before they can practice. It takes time and effort to learn the law, the legal terminology, the application of the law, and the potential consequences if something goes wrong.

Even then, many lawyers who don’t specialize in estate planning, or Wills and Trusts, and who don’t have training as a Personal Family Lawyer®, as we do, put in place legal documents that fail when you become incapacitated or die, for various reasons. And, yet, you may be getting sold on the idea that you can draft legal documents on your own, using an online website. The promise is you can save money, and completely protect yourself and your loved ones from expensive legal consequences of not having planning in place. Since it’s early April when this article is being published, we call “April Fools” on these services.

Let’s keep you from being fooled by illustrating what can happen when you draft legal documents on your own without understanding the consequences. What follows is a true story:

A woman passed away and her husband came into his lawyer’s office to get legal advice on what to do next. The woman we’ll call her “Jane”) received an inheritance from her first husband (let’s call him “John”). She was also close to her adult children and her grandchildren, and wanted to make sure they received what was left of her inheritance from their father. And while she intended to leave her second husband some money, she made it very clear to her family that she wanted to provide for her children and grandchildren.

Jane was frugal. She didn’t want to spend money on an attorney. So she did some research on Google about Wills and Trusts, downloaded some forms, and wrote out her own documents. She learned from Google that a Trust can keep her family from going through a court process called probate, which would save them money and leave more for them to inherit. So she drafted her own Trust thinking that she’d achieve her goals and save money at the same time. 

You may already see where this is going…

When John’s lawyer read Jane’s DIY Trust, they realized that what Jane actually did was leave her entire inheritance to her second husband. Jane legally disinherited her children and grandchildren. Jane’s DIY Trust was also subject to laws of a different U.S. State than the one she lived in, meaning that any legal process related to the Trust would be more complicated than it needed to be. Surely this was not the result Jane wanted.

Jane not only disinherited her children, but she failed to transfer her house to the Trust, despite drafting and filing a deed on her own, and she left assets out of her Trust altogether. So while she thought she was doing the right thing, what she really did was leave her loved ones with a giant, expensive mess. 

Not surprisingly, the family ended up in court and years later, the matter still isn’t resolved.

Jane must have believed what she heard from well-meaning folks like Dave and Suze about doing a Will and Trust on her own. She probably thought she understood the legal documents she drafted and signed. She most definitely thought she was making things easy for her family and that she was giving her children money from their father. But Jane was fooled.

Don’t be Jane. If Jane had worked with a Personal Family Lawyer®, she would have created a plan that would accomplish her goals, and keep her family out of court and out of conflict. She would have saved her family years of heartache and pain, not to mention the expense. Jane’s story teaches us that it’s absolutely worth it to work with a lawyer whenever you’re dealing with a legal document - including a Will or Trust. Don’t “Trust” those (see what we did there?) who say you can do it cheaply or do it yourself. Don’t be Jane.

You owe it to your loved ones to take the time and put in the investment to do your estate planning right, and keep it up over time. In fact, it’s the last and greatest gift you can leave them. Having your affairs buttoned up so they don’t have a mess on their hands and are allowed to process their grief in peace is your final act of love.

If you want to leave your family the gift of your love, we can help. At our firm, we don't merely dispense legal counsel or draft documents; we safeguard your family. We look at your specific family dynamics and your goals and then work with you to create a plan that ensures you and your loved ones avoid the stress, conflict, and chaos that comes from DIY documents.

To learn more about how we approach estate planning from a place of heart so you can leave your family with love, schedule a complimentary 15-minute call with our office here.

This article is a service of a Personal Family Lawyer® Firm. We don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Life & Legacy Planning Session™, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session™.

The content is sourced from Personal Family Lawyer® for use by Personal Family Lawyer® firms, a source believed to be providing accurate information. This material was created for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as ERISA, tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are seeking legal advice specific to your needs, such advice services must be obtained on your own separate from this educational material.

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Do a Google search for “digital wills” or “online estate planning,” and you’ll find dozens of different websites offering low-cost, do-it-yourself (DIY) and sometimes even free estate planning documents, such as wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives.

From LegalZoom® and Rocket Lawyer® to TrustandWill.com and FreeWill.com, these DIY legal documents may seem like a cheap and easy way to finally cross estate planning off your to-do list—and do so without having to pay a lawyer big bucks to assist you. After all, you’ve been able to prepare and file your taxes online for years, is estate planning really that much different? And aren’t lawyers using the very same forms you find on these DIY document websites?

This kind of thinking is exactly what DIY and online estate planning services would like you to believe, but it’s far from true. In fact, relying on DIY or online estate planning documents can be one of the costliest mistakes you can make for your loved ones.

Keep in mind, just because you created “legal” estate planning documents that doesn’t mean they will actually work when you—or most importantly, the people you love—need them. Without a thorough understanding of your family dynamics, the nature of your assets, and how the legal process works upon your death or incapacity, you are likely to make serious mistakes when creating a DIY or online estate plan.

Even worse, these mistakes won’t be discovered until it’s too late—and the loved ones you were trying to protect will be the very ones forced to clean up your mess or get stuck in a costly and traumatic court process that can drag out for months or even years.

In the end, relying on DIY or online estate planning documents can actually be worse than having no estate plan at all—and here’s why:

A False Sense Of Security

Creating your estate plan using online document services can give you a false sense of security—you think you’ve got estate planning covered, when you most likely do not. DIY plans may even lead you to believe that you no longer need to worry about estate planning, causing you to put it off creating a proper plan off until it’s too late.

In this way, relying on DIY estate planning documents is one of the most dangerous choices you can make. In the end, such generic forms could end up costing your family even more money and heartache than if you’d never gotten around to doing any planning at all.

At least with no plan at all, estate planning would likely remain at the front of your mind, where it rightfully belongs until it’s been handled by you and trusted counsel to guide you.

Planning To Fail

The primary purpose of estate planning is to keep your family out of court and out of conflict in the event of your death or incapacity. Yet, as cheap online document services become more and more popular, millions of people are learning—or will soon learn—that taking the DIY route can not only fail to achieve this purpose, it can make things even more complex and costly for the people you love.

Most people assume that estate planning is all about filling out the right legal documents. But in reality, the true value of estate planning is not about the documents themselves—it’s the planning aspect that’s most important, not the documents. Documents are the byproducts of the plan and the outcome of counseling and decisions that require thought, consideration, and a true understanding of all the options and their potential consequences.

Without proper planning and consideration, the documents themselves—wills, trusts, health care directives, and powers of attorney—aren’t worth the paper they're printed on. And by proper planning, we mean having a trusted advisor who can help you anticipate all of the potential problem areas and conflicts—as well as potential opportunities—that could impact your plan, and then help you adapt your plan accordingly and create documents to ensure the maximum benefit (and minimum heartache) for your loved ones.

When done right, the value of this kind of estate planning is truly priceless because it results in the right plan for your family at the right budget for you, and it leaves your loved ones with not just a set of documents, but with a trusted advisor who will be there for them when you cannot be. And this is exactly what we as a Personal Family Lawyer® firm provide every client we serve through our Life & Legacy Planning Process.

In a future article, we will go into detail about how our planning services work, but first let’s look at how DIY planning can go wrong by looking at five of the most common failures you are likely to encounter when using online DIY estate planning documents, instead of working with a lawyer.

One Size Does Not Fit All

“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but PLANNING is indispensable.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower, Former U.S. President and Commander of Allied Forces during WWII

A typical set of documents that you get from an online DIY estate planning service (and even many estate plans created by lawyers) will usually include three to five basic legal documents: a will, a financial power of attorney, a healthcare directive, possibly a trust, and a legal guardian nomination, if you have minor children. By now, it’s fairly common knowledge that these are the legal documents needed in case you become incapacitated or when you die.

But what isn’t common knowledge and what isn’t adequately covered by any online legal document service or even by many lawyers is what needs to go into those documents, and what’s needed to ensure those documents actually work for the people you love when they need them.

You see, standard documents simply cannot address the real-life complexities of your family dynamics, your assets, and the ever-changing circumstances of your life. Contrary to what the DIY services would like you to believe, estate planning is not a one-size-fits-all, once-and-done kind of deal. Even if you think your particular assets and family situation are simple, that turns out to almost never be the case, and you are likely to face one of the following issues that can leave your loved ones at risk.

Number 1 Way Your DIY Estate Plan Can Fail: Thinking A Will Is Enough

One of the ironic things about estate planning is that the one legal document everyone thinks they need most is the one legal document that actually accomplishes the least. Yes, you know you need a will, but a will alone doesn’t do much.

A will can ensure the people you choose are the ones who handle your affairs and who ensure your assets go where you want them to go in the event of your death. But a will does not keep your family out of court. In fact, relying on a will alone ensures your family and friends have to go to court when you die. Plus, a will doesn’t even come into play if you are incapacitated. And if you have minor children, relying on a will alone to designate their legal guardians could leave your kids vulnerable to being taken out of your home and into the care of strangers.

Number 2 Way Your DIY Estate Plan Can Fail: Improper Execution

You could have the best documents in the world, but if you fail to sign them, or sign them improperly, they will fail. It may seem silly, but it’s true. We’ve seen family after family who brought us an estate plan after the death or incapacity of a loved one that we were not able to support them and act upon because the documents were either not signed, or were signed improperly.

To be considered legally valid, certain estate planning documents like wills must be executed (i.e. signed, witnessed, and/or notarized) following very strict legal procedures. For example, many states require that you and every witness to your will must sign it in the presence of one another. If your DIY will doesn’t mention that condition (or you don’t read the fine print) and you fail to follow this procedure, the document can end up worthless.

If you have created or started a DIY estate plan and wish to have it reviewed, contact us, your local Personal Family Lawyer® to see how you can get a Family Wealth Planning Session™ at no cost to you. During this 2-hour session, we will review what would happen to your family and your assets with your current plan and discuss the best next steps for protecting your family. 

Next week in part two of this series, we will cover the remaining three ways your DIY estate plan can fail and leave your family at risk.

This article is a service of a Personal Family Lawyer®. We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Family Wealth Planning Session™, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Family Wealth Planning Session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge.

Proper estate planning can keep your family out of conflict, out of court, and out of the public eye. If you’re ready to create a comprehensive estate plan, contact us to schedule your Family Wealth Planning Session. Even if you already have a plan in place, we will review it and help you bring it up to date to avoid heartache for your family. Schedule online today.