15

Wills, Trusts FAQ

by anthony carducci — last modified Jun 26, 2012 12:40 PM

I have noticed that a significant number of questions have come up from time to time about wills, trusts, guardians and other related issues. As an estate attorney, I wanted to help answer some of these questions with this post. I hope that this post serves as a resource. It would be my peasure to answer any questions that this post raises.

I have noticed many posts about wills, trusts, guardians, how to select an attorney and whether an attorney is even needed. As an estate attorney, I hope this post will help begin the process of answering some of those questions. Please use this post as a resource. Generally, the questions have asked the following:

1. Why bother with the expense of an attorney. Can't you just use Legalzoom, Nolo or one of the many online/software tools to create your will?

Answer: 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. 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? Also, there are little things that the software designer may have overlooked that could cost your estate hundreds to maybe thousands of dollars. The software will not update your will when the law changes.