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Doing your own will can be safe under some circumstances. Some of these are:
You live in a state that does not require a lawyer to notarize a will.
Whew - so you think a will needs to be notarized - attorney, bank employee makes no difference, without WITNESSES, most wills are invalid.
You have assigned beneficiaries to your investment and bank accounts.
You leave at least something to all your children so none can claim you forgot them in error.
Many seniors have few assets and a simple will done by themselves will suffice. If there are complicated financial or family circumstances, consulting a lawyer is advisable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Harpaint
I think it would be difficult to find an attorney who would notarize a will for you unless you used him to draw up the will. Fortunately regular notaries can notarize wills in most states, maybe all now.
That's the big kicker! Can you give us some guidance on how to find a competent estate attorney? Especially when moving to a new state/city where you don't know anybody except the realtor who sold you a house.
www.martindale.com/find-lawyers-and-law-firms.aspx
Use Martindale-Hubbell’s lawyer locator to find lawyers, law firms, in-house counsel, corporate legal departments, U.S. government and law school faculty members.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkalot
Some areas in some states have paralegal services. I paid $85 for a 3 page codicil last summer. Changed who gets it and what charity if they are dead.
I know a lot of attorneys and I don't know a single one who would use a codicil. Better rewrite the will. EXCEPTION: if there is now concern about the mental state of the testator. What if the codicil gets lost? What if there are errors in the codicil - signing, witnesses, etc?
It never ceases to amaze me that people think that because they can read, they can practice law better than an experienced attorney.
Let me ask you this: If you had been arrested and were facing criminal charges, would you feel you could competently defend yourself better than a lawyer could? My bet is you'd be looking for the best criminal defense lawyer you could afford. Writing a will or a trust is no different, although to many non-lawyers it appears to be easy enough to do for yourself. It's not.
When I was in law school studying wills and trusts and all the things that can go wrong with them, I made a mental note-to-self: Hire an experienced lawyer to do my estate planning for me. I'm a lawyer, I passed the bar exam, and I won't risk trying to do my own will.
Mathjak said it right: There's never a problem until there's a problem. And once you're dead, there are no do-overs. If your estate planning is important enough to require a will in the first place, it's important enough to pay someone who knows what they're doing to do it right.
Use an Attorney. If you look at the boiler plate forms you will see they suggest the paperwork get reviewed by an Attorney.
This OP was about the Willmamer software. It does NOT instruct you to get it reviewed by an attorney no attorney will do so. It does need to be notarized properly and you can get a lawyer to notarized it. We did.spreading fake information is a useless activity.
It never ceases to amaze me that people think that because they can read, they can practice law better than an experienced attorney.
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Making your own will is not practicing law. Yes, if you can read you CAN make your own will. If it is a complicated one with all kinds of trusts, then yes may want to see a lawyer.
I know a lot of attorneys and I don't know a single one who would use a codicil. Better rewrite the will. EXCEPTION: if there is now concern about the mental state of the testator. What if the codicil gets lost? What if there are errors in the codicil - signing, witnesses, etc?
I know a lot of attorneys too. I know them(friends and relatives that are attorneys) well enough that they will say if I need them or not.
What if the will gets lost? What if there are errors in the will?
we had a horror show at our refinance closing on an inherited house .
the will was missing one word that cost us plenty .
the word omitted was the word only , as in i leave my house to my child beth .
it did not read "ONLY" child . the title company stopped the closing . i had to pay 3 attorney's for the day and lost my rate at a time of rising rates .
we had to gather affidavit's from relatives that she was an only child and reschedule and pay everyone a second time as well as got a rate increase .
what could be simpler than that to go wrong ? another amateur mistake . nothing is ever a problem until it's a problem .
as they say , no one ever met a will they didn't like . they all look easy and simple as long as nothing becomes an issue .
the defective trust we ran in to with the estranged step children looked letter perfect to the amateur eye . clearly it was a simple straight forward deal , grandpa said they are to get nothing and did so specifically by name . it was clear he wanted them to not get one penny .
well grandpa died , and everything went to grand ma for now . the issue was grandma's son died before she did . there was no predeceasing verbiage in the document the judge said . so the trust was defective .
that being the case the judge said he may have to go by the estranged step children's fathers will . well his will called for taking care of all his children ,
so now there is a dilemma . grandpa qand grandma wanted the step kids to get nothing . but the childrens father (grandpa's son ) called for taking care of all the children .
depending which document the court decides to use the outcome is quite different .
the judge's suggestion after contacting the grand children and notifying them of the defective document , was to reach an out of court settlement with them , which we did and cost us multiple 6 figures in legal fee's and settlement costs with the step kids .
soooooo as simple as you may think these canned documents are or documents done by discount attorneys there can be pitfalls every where and your requests may get side tracked with your money going to everyone else but the heirs you intended ...
Last edited by mathjak107; 12-31-2016 at 05:50 AM..
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