I am not suggesting that CPS would ever not release the kids to the appropriate guardians or family members. As to CPS, I am merely suggesting that if the police cannot find local family to leave the kids with, they are basically going to have no choice but to call in CPS to take the kids for at least a short period of time. If they cannot find local family/guardians/friends, I do not have any problem with that as it is usually for the kids' benefit. However, most parents that I know would prefer not to have their kids with anyone other than those they trust most. So, it is better to either name local guardians or work with a lawyer such as myself in getting short-term temporary guardians named while your non-local/out of state long-term guardians make it into town to get custody of your kids. There is no fear here-I am only trying to point out some things that parents should be on the lookout for. For me, this is about being helpful and giving parents the information that they need to make empowered decisions for their family.

By the way, I am stunned that a professional such as a certified financial planner would not seek out the advice of a qualified attorney for their will! Imagine someone saying to a financial planner that they knew that they should invest some of their assets but decided they would just purchase a software system to appropriately allocate their money. My guess is that virtually any financial planner would suggest this is a bad idea because professionals such as your husband have training, knowledge and experience that most do not have. The same is true of attorneys. You are not paying for documents when you hire an attorney. You are paying for advice and you are paying to have the ramifications of different choices explained.

Sincerely,
Anthony Carducci, Esq.
888-628-2220
acarducci@msn.com

My husband is a certified financial planner. We are young and don't have much wealth yet, but he works on estate planning for high net worth clients all the time. We did legalzoom and got a lot of life insurance. FWIW, I work in social services qnd think the lawyer is just fearmongering about CPS to drum up business. CPS would be more than happy to let whatever competent relative, neighbor, or friend keep the kid temporarily while a permanent plan is put into place. They are not particularly interested in putting new orphans in foster care. Make sure your kid knows/the school or whoever has on file to call your sibling or friend (whoever the emergency contact is) if anything happens.

Hey there.

For the record, Mr. Carducci did not pay or encourage me in any way me to say the following:

Based on a recommendation on DCUM, I retained him, and was very pleased. I also had sinilarly uncomplicated matters (well, except for joint custody), and for a really modest fee, he did a great job of covering all my bases and explaining anything I had questions about.

You also might want to consider having power of attorney documents so you can make decisions for each other if one of you is incapacitated. Buying life insurance is definitely important as well.

If your situation is as straightforward as you've described it, you probably don't need a lawyer for wills. In some states, paralegals can do a will for a couple hundred dollars or so. Most will software will tailor the provisions of your will based on the state you live in.

Its not what is spelled out in the Will, and you are correct it doesn't have to be exact for most things spelled out in the Will. The point is being made when (or if) the Will has to go thru probate than assets will become public knowledge as they are filled with the court. An inventory of assets is provided along with the original will document as part of the probate proceedings. Its the manner in which possible creditors have for making a claim against an estate. Sure, not everyone will need to go thru probate but the fact does remain that life changes and if they were to purchase a house or have another child etc if their Will is not updated to include these types of life changes things could get very complicated for whomever will be in charge of carrying for the kids, their assets etc.

No one is suggesting people shouldn't gets wills-- I think the discussion is more about how much benefit a person with a fairly simple situation (no special needs, no exes, not a lot of assets) would get from an attorney vs using willmaker.

The fact is that it's very easy for most people these days to avoid probate on most of their assets. Especially a family that doesn't own a home, their financial assets probably already have (or else could get) beneficiaries.
Everyone should keep retirement account beneficiary information up to date, and bank accounts can also have payable on death beneficiaries.

Yes they would have to consider whether they are comfortable with those assets being transferred to their kids, but in MD at least that would likely occur at 21, not 18.

Last, the suggestion that a will provides scary details about assets that people will use to exploit your kids seems off to me. Most assets can/will pass outside the will and don't need to be mentioned, but even assets that pass through the will don't need to be specifically identified in the will. There's no need for a will to say "I give my child Jack $250,000".

DH and I went through this recently, and while we do have two incomes and a mortgage, our primary concern was taking care of our DD if we both died at the same time (highly unlikely, of course, but better to be safe than sorry). We put it off for awhile because of laziness and the cost, but before a big trip we were going on, we finally did it. We hired a lawyer and it cost about $800 (not cheap, but well worth the piece of mind). He talked us through all the points that the lawyer in this thread discusses, plus we did things like a living will, power of attorney and who would make medical decisions on our behalf, if for ex., one of us was in a coma. We purposely chose guardians that are local (but we have local family; if we ever move, we would change them). Our attorney also covered things like if we both died, how college would be paid for and how any other money would be distributed to our child (trust me, it isn't that much) -- I think we have money being disbursed to her at 21 and 25. I'm a newspaper reporter so I can attest that these documents are public, but I don't know too many people who are trolling them looking for people to take advantage of (then again, I wouldn't put it past anyone these days). I think the point is, YOU want to protect and make these decisions for your child, not anyone else and certainly not the courts. Please talk to a lawyer, at least, to see what you realistically might want and need.

Yes. Going through this right now. It took over 9 months from the death of my father before probate was reahed. During this time we have been incurring a lot of expenses related to his death, care of his property etc. We have quickly run thru what money he was able to give directly to us (payable on death), leaving us without the legal authorization to make any discussions, nor the financial support needed to close out his affairs. Its a miserable situation to find yourself in - when you have creditors wanting money and you have no ability to get it to them and yet you need their services to protect his property. Unless you have gone through it you may not realize HOW important it is to have good, sound estate advise. My father did a lot of things right, unfortunately he died unexpectedly before he could complete all of his affairs leaving us in this awful situation.

Just for argument sake, let's say that you are right (even though you are not) about points 3-7 being misleading, the other points are good reasons alone to use an attorney. As to points 3-7, they are all verifiable so I encourage anyone that takes issue with them to look them up rather than just come on here and post that they don't accept them. Simple questions:

1. What happens to your kids if you and your spouse die and there are no reachable family members that can get the kids within an hour or so? Of course the police will call in CPS for the safety and well-being of the kids. My point here is that naming guardians in your will is not enough unless they are local and possibly that might not even be enough. As a lawyer, I do something extra to handle this.

2. Why do you think that it will not take 9 months to go through probate? Technically, no distribution of assets is supposed to be made until probate is complete. Sure, some of the assets can be used on the kids during this time, but the body of the assets will not get dispersed for at least 9 months even in a drama-free situation. What happens if your creditors or disgruntled family members fight over your kids and assets? In that situation, it will not take 9 months. It will take years. There are ways to avoid probate entirely, but not if all you have is a will.

3. Call the Register of wills in DC or in your particular county in Maryland/Virginia and ask them about probate. They will tell you that once probate is open an individual can go down to the courthouse and see what has been filed. You can even see some of this stuff online.

Trust me when I tell that these matters are verifiable. To the original poster of this thread, I am still more than willing to sit down with you and talk about these issues in a no-obligation manner.

Sincerely,
Anthony Carducci, Esq.
Law Office of Anthony S. Carducci, PC
888-628-2220

acarducci wrote:Great question. Please do not hold it against me that I am a lawyer that is responding to your question (just a little lawyer humor). Anyway, you mentioned the $1 million threshold. This is for people that need to do planning to minimize the impact of estate taxes. In your situation estate taxes do not apply. However, there are still good reasons for you to use an attorney rather than the software:

1. Sure, using this software and putting something into place is much better than not having a will at all. It is better than not having anything in place. Any piece of software designed to write a will can do so and will always be cheaper than using an attorney. However, when you hire an attorney, you are not hiring that person to just create form documents. You are hiring that person for the advice that will be provided to you and for the experience gained from school and from working with people similar to you.

2. Often the software does not have everything that you need included in a will. When you use a piece of software, it cannot advise you as to the ramifications of what you have written. When you use a piece of software can you be sure that it has been tailored to your state's rules? The programs sometimes do not include little details that can end up costing your estate several hundred to several thousand dollars during probate. It is better to pay a little more for an attorney to draft your plan correctly than save a few dollars on the software and then have to redo whatever the program did incorrectly.

3. A will does nothing to protect your kids from being taken into protective custody by Child Protective Services if you and your spouse are in an accident or something and your guardians cannot be reached or if they are not local.

4. Upon your death, a will is a public document that anyone can go to the register of wills office and review. So, someone could see what assets your kids could be inheriting and try to prey upon them.

5. If you only write a will, then your assets will go through probate, which means that it will take at least 9 months for your assets to get to your kids or to whoever you want to inherit them. This is also the time when creditors come in and can say that you owe them money and should be paid out of your estate. Lawyers know how to avoid probate and can help you with this.

6. If all you do is write a will and your kids are minors when you pass away, then at 18 your kids will have their assets distributed outright to them. Will your kids be mature enough at 18 to handle the assets that they inherit?

7. The software will not update your plan when the law changes.

If you would like to talk about this in more detail, I would be happy to sit down with you for free. Please email me at acarducci@msn.com or phone me at 888-628-2220.

Sincerely,
Anthony Carducci, Esq.
Law Office of Anthony S. Carducci, PC

These points in particular seem like BS to me (meaning they are misleading/partially incorrect at best).

Great question. Please do not hold it against me that I am a lawyer that is responding to your question (just a little lawyer humor). Anyway, you mentioned the $1 million threshold. This is for people that need to do planning to minimize the impact of estate taxes. In your situation estate taxes do not apply. However, there are still good reasons for you to use an attorney rather than the software:

1. Sure, using this software and putting something into place is much better than not having a will at all. It is better than not having anything in place. Any piece of software designed to write a will can do so and will always be cheaper than using an attorney. However, when you hire an attorney, you are not hiring that person to just create form documents. You are hiring that person for the advice that will be provided to you and for the experience gained from school and from working with people similar to you.

2. Often the software does not have everything that you need included in a will. When you use a piece of software, it cannot advise you as to the ramifications of what you have written. When you use a piece of software can you be sure that it has been tailored to your state's rules? The programs sometimes do not include little details that can end up costing your estate several hundred to several thousand dollars during probate. It is better to pay a little more for an attorney to draft your plan correctly than save a few dollars on the software and then have to redo whatever the program did incorrectly.

3. A will does nothing to protect your kids from being taken into protective custody by Child Protective Services if you and your spouse are in an accident or something and your guardians cannot be reached or if they are not local.

4. Upon your death, a will is a public document that anyone can go to the register of wills office and review. So, someone could see what assets your kids could be inheriting and try to prey upon them.

5. If you only write a will, then your assets will go through probate, which means that it will take at least 9 months for your assets to get to your kids or to whoever you want to inherit them. This is also the time when creditors come in and can say that you owe them money and should be paid out of your estate. Lawyers know how to avoid probate and can help you with this.

6. If all you do is write a will and your kids are minors when you pass away, then at 18 your kids will have their assets distributed outright to them. Will your kids be mature enough at 18 to handle the assets that they inherit?

7. The software will not update your plan when the law changes.

If you would like to talk about this in more detail, I would be happy to sit down with you for free. Please email me at acarducci@msn.com or phone me at 888-628-2220.

Sincerely,
Anthony Carducci, Esq.
Law Office of Anthony S. Carducci, PC

There was a recent thread on this in another section (Expectant Moms?) and PPs recommended the willmaker software. No personal experience with it since we're in the same situation as you are.

Estate planning usually refers to managing wealth, which you don't appear to have. Just tell lawyers you call you want to write a will. Don't mention having an estate or they might get all excited.

Hi all,

My husband and I are interested in putting our legal affairs in order - the usual - will/estate, advance directive, health proxy, etc.

We are very simple financially - one income, two kids, we don't own anything major (like a house). Do we really need a lawyer? We have much less than 1m in assets (I've heard this mentioned as a type of threshold), and live in DC.

Do you think we'd be ok using either legal zoom or rocket lawyer or some similar service? 2k-4k for this would be a lot for us.

Thanks.