PART I: THE HIDDEN RISKS OF ONLINE ESTATE PLANNING SERVICES: IS IT WORTH IT?

It has never been easier to create an estate plan. With a quick internet search, you’ll find countless websites promising that, after answering a handful of questions, you’ll have everything you need, including a will, power of attorney, health care proxy, and even a trust, in a matter of minutes.

The process is appealing. It’s fast, convenient, and often significantly less expensive than hiring an attorney.

For some people, that may be enough.

If your circumstances are relatively simple, an online estate planning service may produce documents that accomplish your goals. But for many people, estate planning is more complicated than an online questionnaire can capture. Once you own a home, have children, are part of a blended family, own a business, or simply want to make life easier for your loved ones, the questions, and the answers, become much more nuanced.

The goal isn’t simply to have a will or a trust. It’s to have an estate plan that works when your family needs it.

Why Online Estate Planning Is So Popular

It’s easy to understand the appeal of online estate planning services.

They offer two things that appeal to almost everyone: lower upfront cost and convenience. You can complete the process from your home, on your own schedule, without making an appointment or sitting through a meeting.

Those benefits are real.

What many people don’t realize, however, is that preparing estate planning documents is only one part of the process. Deciding which documents you need, how they should work together and whether they truly accomplish your goals requires legal judgment that an online questionnaire simply cannot provide.

Estate Planning Is About More Than Documents

One of the biggest misconceptions about estate planning is that an attorney’s job is simply to prepare legal documents.

In reality, much of an estate planning attorney’s work happens before a single document is drafted.

Clients rarely come into my office asking whether they need a particular legal provision in their will or trust. Instead, they ask practical questions about their families and their future.

They want to know:

• What happens if one of my children dies before I do?
• Should my children inherit everything outright, or should their inheritance remain in trust?
• How can I provide for my spouse while making sure my children from a prior marriage are also protected?
• If I create a trust, what assets should actually be transferred into it?
• What happens if one of my beneficiaries is going through a divorce or has creditor problems?

These aren’t unusual situations. They are questions that come up every day, and they don’t have one-size-fits-all answers.

An online questionnaire can’t ask follow-up questions when something doesn’t seem quite right. It can’t explain the advantages and disadvantages of different planning options. Most importantly, it can’t recognize issues you may not even realize exist.