Estate Planning Mistakes Revisited - Do it Yourself Wills Don't Work!

I was surprised to read an article that appeared in the "Cranky Consumer" section of The Wall Street Journal last week touting the usefulness of "do it yourself wills" - Before It's Too Late: A Test of Online Wills. A quick internet search about the writer, Jane Hodges, reveals that she is a Seattle-based freelancer who writes about business and finance topics for newspapers and magazines. In other words, she is not an attorney and in fact she admits in the article that she is not going to hire one to review the documents she created using several different online programs including Suze Orman's Wills & Trust Kit (cost - $13.50 - are you kidding me?), LegacyWriter (cost - $35), LegalZoom (cost - a whopping $377.95), and BuildaWill (cost not mentioned). So how can Ms. Hodges be sure that any of the documents she created will work when they are really needed if she does not have them reviewed by a qualified estate planning attorney? Well Ms. Hodges, here's some free legal advice - you will never know if the estate planning documents you created will work when they are needed because you will either be mentally incapacitated or dead! And your husband or other family members will be left to foot the legal bills that will inevitably be incurred to clean up the mess that you created.

In the article Ms. Hodges states that she is married without children, she and her husband co-own their home and they have general savings that they keep separate as well as life insurance and retirement accounts. She states "Our needs, we figured, were simple." How did she figure that one out? And she goes on to complain that she had a heck of a time figuring out how to deal with the jointly owned home in the context of a will and revocable living trust. Well, Ms. Hodges, here's some more free legal advice - since the house is in joint names it won't even come into play at all in a will or revocable living trust! Apparently her online programs could not effectively explain this and she also complains that with all four services she had to "back up and re-start, or exit and make revisions." Why? Because she had no clue what she was doing! And to top if off Ms. Hodges does not even mention Washington state estate taxes - apparently all of the programs failed to mention the estate tax exemption gap of $1.5 million between the Washington estate tax exemption and the federal estate tax exemption, which could lead to a huge wrinkle in Ms. Hodges' estate plan.

In the end Ms. Hodges wonders which program actually produced the "superior will," but she will never know since she goes on to state that while each online program "purports to yield documents that clearly outline our intentions in the event of our demise or death," she did not (and apparently will not at any time in the future) hire an estate planning attorney to review them. In defense of her actions she states: "We're hoping that we - and our heirs - won't have to worry about it any time soon." What a naive statement! Here's one last piece of free legal advice Ms. Hodges - while you may not become mentally incapacitated, you will die and if you do not ever have the documents that you created reviewed by a qualified estate planning attorney, then your plan will fail when it is needed and your loved ones will curse the day that you decided to leave some of the most important decisions that you will have to make in your life up to a computer program that cost $13.50.

As Attorney David Shulman wrote over at his South Florida Estate Planning Law blog, The Wall Street Journal Totally Blows it on Online Wills. Instead of "Cranky Consumer" Attorney Shulman suggests that the section should be titled "Idiot Consumer." I agree 100%.

• Should You Write Your Own Will?
• Does Do It Yourself Estate Planning Work?
• Estate Planning Don'ts - Don't Write Your Own Will
• Do You Need to Hire an Estate Planning Attorney?
• Will Your Estate Plan Work When It's Needed?

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