People have many options today for creating their own estate planning documents. Forms can be purchased quickly from websites and books. However, trying to create your own estate plan can actually be more expensive than hiring an attorney.
Everyone knows that attorneys can be expensive. This is just as true for estate planning attorneys as it is for other types of attorneys. An entire industry has sprung up to give consumers a cheaper option for some supposedly routine legal matters, like estate plans. Forms are available for downloading online that promise buyers they just need to read the instructions and fill in the blanks to create their own wills and trusts.
One major problem with these services is when estate planning is not done properly it is much more expensive to fix things than it would have been to hire an attorney to do things right in the first place.
Recently, the Record-Bee published a story with some examples of what has gone wrong with these downloadable estate plans. The article is appropriately titled "Your Legacy and Peace of Mind: The pitfalls of do-it-yourself estate planning."
If you are considering making your own estate plan, take some time to read the stories in the article. Hopefully, that will inspire you to go ahead and visit an estate planning attorney to make sure that you do not make mistakes doing things on your own. Remember, everyone is different and everyone's life/family situation is different, so why would there be a "cookie cutter" estate planning form that works for you and everyone else?
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Reference: Record-Bee (January 20, 2015) "Your Legacy and Peace of Mind: The pitfalls of do-it-yourself estate planning."