For years I’ve been counseling and coaching against DIY legal documents. My reasoning has been simple:
They’re boilerplate, so the problem isn’t necessarily the platform; the problem is the lack of personal, individualized legal advice. I’ve heard the comparison when someone talks about TurboTax versus a CPA. TurboTax is a good product, I know people who use it successfully. What it doesn’t do is ask follow-up questions or spot issues. Asking the right questions leads to the right documents.
Strongest reasons against DIY
The user doesn’t know what they don’t know.
People fill in forms based on what they think is important. The attorney asks questions that were likely never considered and when asked become “blinding flashes of the obvious.”
More times than I can count people have said to me, “I didn’t know that!” They could’ve been prospective clients or just people I was talking to about what I do. It doesn’t matter what a person’s area of expertise in; we’ve all likely found ourselves saying “I didn’t know that” about something at some time.
Some examples of issues that might not occur to someone using a DIY platform include:
- Blended families
- Disabled beneficiaries
- Minor children
- Medicaid concerns
- Execution requirements
- Beneficiary designations that inadvertently override a Will or Trust
An example of a user not knowing what they didn’t know is a family who used a DIY Last Will and Testament for a parent. They did exactly what they understood the instructions to require – they had two witnesses and a notary. Unfortunately, the Self-Proving Affidavit didn’t comply with current Florida requirements. The family didn’t realize it, the notary didn’t catch it, and the client died making the document potentially problematic to be used should the estate need probate.
Documents can be legally valid and produce unwanted results
Many DIY documents are legally enforceable – sadly, that doesn’t mean they accomplish the client’s results. I’ve met few individuals who are comfortable with the idea of their children inheriting money at 18. Without someone asking the right questions, it happens.
Examples:
- Children inherit outright at age 18
- No provision for special needs situations
- No provisions if everyone dies together
Courts generally enforce documents as they’re written – not as someone later wishes they’d been written.
Estate Planning is a roadmap – not just a pile of documents
People often think estate planning is about death – it’s not. It’s about who’s going to make decisions for you when you’re no longer able – coordinating beneficiary designations with your Will or Trust, choosing people to act on your behald and anticipating situations that could place unintended stress on your family.
A DIY user may think the questions are easy to answer. For example, “I’ll appoint my oldest, and they’ll do what’s right by their siblings” referring to naming the eldest child as the sole beneficiary with the expectation they will share with the others. There are two reasons I discourage this: (1) the emotional one is your family needs to grieve when you pass so I recommend letting the financial institutions make distributions and (2) the more calculated reason is that the one left in charge may not be speaking to their siblings when you pass and there is no legal obligation to share funds.
Having a strategy, building a roadmap for your planning includes
- Tough questions about choices
- Beneficiary designations
- Family dynamics
- Titling assets
- Long-term care planning
- Successor fiduciary selection
Nobody reviews whether the answers make sense given the circumstances.
An attorney reviewing a completed DIY document must consider whether the right questions were asked to satisfy what the client wants. In many cases, starting over is more efficient while providing greater confidence in the final product.
A DIY platform generally accepts the information entered.
The attorney notices things like:
- You left everything to three children equally and one has special needs
- You named your 84-year-old sister as successor trustee
- You named your eldest your sole beneficiary believing they’ll share with their siblings
Conclusion: DIY Estate Planning Has a Higher Risk
DIY legal platforms are trained to produce documents. Attorneys are trained to identify issues clients don’t yet know about. These are two very different services.
DIY can be attractive – it may save time and money and avoid sharing personal information with a third party. What it usually doesn’t do is stop and ask, “Are you sure?
- A document is only as good as the information that went into creating it
- A document may work – just not the way the creator hoped. Mistakes are often only discovered after someone passes.
- Documents are simply written instructions.
Software rarely asks the follow-up question that can change everything.
If you love your family, don’t confuse filling out forms with having a roadmap.