If you have $500 or anything you want to go to somebody, you need a will.
Category: Estate Planning
DIY Estate Planning – Maybe Think Again!
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.
What is Elder Law?
Elder law is a specialty inside the world of estate planning in order to protect people’s assets. People continue to think they have to go broke to qualify for some programs, and that’s not the case.
People think “I don’t have anything” – So untrue!
Better to have some plan that lays out your wishes whether for $500.00 or $500,000.00 or more. If you don’t plan, whatever state you live in has a plan and there’s a risk your assets get distributed in a manner that has you turning over in your grave.
Powers of Attorney: Why They’re Essential (And Why Waiting Can Be Emotionally Exhausting)
“My husband is in the hospital and I need a Power of Attorney.”
“My wife just had surgery and we need to put off signing documents.”
“My sister is in a nursing home and I need help.”
I’ve heard these words more than once in recent months.
The common thread isn’t age, wealth, or family circumstance. The common thread is timing.
The people needing help had either never given much thought to a Power of Attorney or had planned to “get around to it later.” Then something happens — a stroke, illness, surgery, dementia concerns, an accident, or simply an unexpected decline — and suddenly “later” has arrived.
As an understatement, legal documents often don’t work well on an emergency timetable.
The Problem Isn’t Just Physical Illness
When someone is in the hospital or a nursing home, people understandably assume that if they can physically sign a document, everything is fine.
Yet, signing a legal document requires more than being able to sign on a designated line.
As an attorney, I have both a legal and ethical responsibility to be comfortable saying that someone signing a document understands what they are signing and is making that decision knowingly.
Crisis situations can make this difficult.
I’ve seen circumstances where someone was completely clear and lucid one moment and confused the next. I’ve seen situations where pain medications affected awareness. I’ve seen situations where certain infections impact mental function. I’ve seen memory issues where a person could carry on a conversation for several minutes and then become disoriented, sometimes in mid-conversation.
In these situations, timing becomes unpredictable. Sometimes it becomes impossible.
A Situation That Illustrates the Problem
Recently I met with the spouse of a couple who had recently moved to Florida to become Florida residents.
The other spouse had been diagnosed with dementia. To the best of the knowledge of the spouse with whom I spoke, no physician had formally determined that the “ill” spouse lacked capacity to make decisions. I was asked to meet with the ill spouse and share what I thought.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t comfortable with the capacity of the ill spouse.
The couple had Powers of Attorney from the state where they previously lived which, at first seemed like good news. While the documents covered many general situations, they did not contain provisions needed for the circumstances now facing them in Florida.
They had a document, but not what they needed. That can be difficult to understand even in the best of circumstances.
This can almost be harder than having no document at all because people reasonably assume that with an existing document that any situation will be covered…until they discover that the person wanting to help is unexpectedly limited.
What a Durable Power of Attorney Actually Does
A Durable Power of Attorney allows one person (called the Agent) to make financial decisions for another person (called the Principal).
The word durable is important because it means the authority continues even if the individual later becomes unable to make decisions independently.
Depending on how it is written, powers may include:
- Accessing bank accounts
- Making deposits and withdrawals
- Handling real estate matters
- Managing digital assets
- Creating or modifying a revocable trust (if specifically authorized)
- Applying for government benefits such as Medicaid or VA benefits
- Handling financial matters during periods of incapacity
Some of these powers — particularly certain estate planning powers and Medicaid-related powers — must be expressly included in the document.
And that’s where problems often arise.
The Missing Powers People Never Think About
In many of the situations I’ve recently seen, the issue wasn’t simply that a Power of Attorney didn’t exist. The issue was that the existing document lacked the specific power needed at the moment. The Agent suddenly discovers they cannot take an action everyone assumed would be allowed.
Imagine trying to help your spouse or parent during a crisis and you hear: “I’m sorry — you don’t have authority to do that.”
That is a difficult conversation.
This Isn’t Just for Older Adults
Long before I opened my practice, I became aware of another reality:
- One second after midnight on the day a child turns eighteen, parents lose legal authority they previously had.
Parents may still be Mom and Dad and be able to help financially. Legally, their child has become an adult.
If an eighteen-year-old is in an accident, hospitalized, or facing an unexpected medical issue, parents often discover they no longer have automatic authority to help with financial and legal matters.
Tragedies don’t respect age.
Married People Need Powers of Attorney Too
I often hear this:
“But we’re married.”
Many spouses assume marriage automatically gives them authority to handle financial decisions for one another. In many situations, it doesn’t – consider a couple who keeps separate checking/savings account.
Marriage does not automatically allow a spouse to sign documents, access accounts, complete certain transactions, or take actions that require legal authority.
And when those assumptions meet real life — during illness, incapacity, or crisis — families can find themselves facing unnecessary obstacles at exactly the wrong time.
The Best Time Is Before You Need It
Estate planning often asks us to consider possibilities we’d rather avoid thinking about: accidents, illness, strokes, surgery, or cognitive decline.
Most people don’t avoid Powers of Attorney because they’re careless. They avoid them because they don’t expect life to change quickly.
Many of the difficult calls I receive begin with the same realization:
“We thought we had more time.”
The best Power of Attorney is the one signed long before anyone needs it — giving the people who love you, and the people you love, the ability to help when life becomes unexpectedly hard.
Uncomfortable Family Conversations about Estate Planning
Around Christmas each year, I mention in my podcast that it’s a perfect time to ask family members over the age of 18 whether they’ve considered creating an estate plan. I mention 18 because, in most states, once a child becomes a legal adult, parents can no longer automatically make medical or financial decisions for them.
While I mention 18-year-olds here, this post is really about adults with any adult children who often have children of their own.
Our culture does not encourage conversations about money, inheritance, illness, incapacity or death. We avoid talking about who receives what, who can speak to doctors, who makes medical or financial decisions if someone can’t, who gets Dad’s tools or guns or who receives Mom’s jewelry.
More than once I’ve met with adult children who believed their parents had planned ahead financially, only to discover after a death that there was little or nothing available to cover final expenses. What the parents actually had was a $1,000 life insurance policy they received years earlier when they opened a bank account.
One of my first clients was a couple in this situation. His Dad kept saying everything was taken care of. Then Dad passed, and all that was available was $1,000. The son and siblings paid over $10,000 of their own funds. He vowed he wasn’t going to do that to his children.
Detailed conversations about estate planning can prevent this. I know it can be difficult. When I do my own estate planning, it sometimes seemed overwhelming … and I’m an estate planning attorney. So I truly appreciate that these conversations can be difficult. They require vulnerability. They may expose financial realities – abundance or limitations. They may involve discussing declining health, fears about incapacity, or end-of-life wishes that differ from what family members would hope for. They may involve conversations about end of life, from doing all that’s possible to doing nothing at all.
The conversations are necessary. They are rarely easy. They are easy to postpone. AND they are one of the greatest gifts families can give to one another.
Debbie London Baker on Ask the Experts, Uncomfortable Family Conversations about Estate Planning
Conversations are an important part of estate planning. Sometimes they’re a little uncomfortable. Hold those conversations anyway.
Outdated Beneficiary Designations Can Undermine Even the Best Estate Plan
When most people think about estate planning, they think about wills and trusts. Those documents matter — deeply. But there is a quiet detail that can completely override them: outdated beneficiary designations and uncoordinated assets.
A simple form you filled out years ago, perhaps when starting a job or opening an account, may control who receives significant assets at your death. And those forms do not update themselves when life changes.
What Is a Beneficiary Designation?
A beneficiary designation is the written instruction you give to a financial institution telling them who receives a particular asset when you pass away.
Where Do Beneficiary Designations Apply?
Beneficiary designations commonly apply to:
- Life insurance policies
- Retirement accounts (401(k)s, IRAs)
- Payable-on-death (POD) or transfer-on-death (TOD) accounts
- Annuities and certain pensions
Here is the critical part: beneficiary designations override your will and often your trust. If your will says “divide equally among my children,” but your life insurance form still names your former spouse, the former spouse receives the funds. Period.
Why These Mistakes Happen
These forms are often completed during busy seasons of life — starting a new job, opening an account, refinancing a home. Then they sit untouched for decades while life moves on.
Marriage, divorce, births, deaths, remarriages, blended families — all of these change your intentions. The paperwork, however, does not change unless you change it.
How This Plays Out in Real Life
Here’s some common scenarios.
- An ex-spouse receives life insurance proceeds simply because a designation beneficiary form was never updated.
- A younger child is unintentionally excluded because they were not yet born when the account was opened.
- Assets intended to pass through a carefully drafted trust bypass it entirely.
- A jointly titled bank account passes automatically to one child, even though the plan called for equal division among all.
Uncoordinated Assets: The Hidden Threat
Estate planning is not just about drafting documents. It is about coordination. Your trust only controls the assets that are legally aligned with it.
If your home was never deeded into the trust, it may require probate.
If retirement beneficiaries do not align with your plan, tax consequences may accelerate.
If business interests lack clear succession planning, family disputes can follow.
These are not rare outcomes, but they are preventable ones.
How to Protect Your Estate Plan
- Review beneficiary designations regularly — especially after major life events.
- Ensure key assets are properly titled or coordinated with your trust.
- Work with an experienced estate planning attorney to align documents and assets.
- Communicate your intentions clearly when appropriate to reduce confusion and conflict.
Your Estate Plan Deserves Precision
An estate plan reflects your life’s work, your values, and your love for the people you leave behind. It deserves attention to detail.
At London Baker Law, we do more than draft documents. We help ensure that every piece of your financial life works together — so what you built over a lifetime goes to exactly the people you want it to go to – no fuss, no muss.
If it has been years since you reviewed your beneficiary designations, this is your gentle nudge. Let’s make sure your paperwork still reflects your heart.
Debbie London Baker on Ask the Experts, November 2025
Topics include:
- How life coaching helps
- Putting planning off is expensive – emotionally and financially
- Biggest surprise when people decide to plan. Hardest decisions
- Living Wills and Last Wills are often confused by people
- What is a Durable Power of Attorney
Family Conversations for Generational Wisdom 2025
The holidays are a good time to catch up with family and friends. They’re a good time for what I call “generational wisdom” – those stories the younger generations hear from their parents and grandparents.
Here are a few ways to bring up those conversations. They’re a way to get your parents talking about their childhood, growing up, and family history. You might even get some wonderful lessons about love, life and what matters most.
Ask Questions
You can start the conversation with questions. Here’s my list in no particular order:
- What did you like most about growing up in your hometown?
- How did you meet your spouse/partner?
- How did you know he/she was “the one”?
- What do you remember most about your mom/grandmother?
- What do you remember most about your dad/grandfather?
- How did you choose your career? What was/is your favorite part of it?
- What did you do in… the military, in college, in high school, in your first job, on your first date?
- What are some of your first memories?
- Do you remember when somebody (mom, dad, aunt, uncle) was born?
Pull Out a Few Old Pictures (or all of them)
Select a a few old pictures to pass around. People will naturally start talking about the people, the places, and the events..
You can even bring out photo albums and the boxes of unsorted pictures. But selecting a few pictures ahead of time is enough to start the conversations.
If you don’t have old prints, you can select a few digital images you have, and get them printed at a local drug store or retail photo printer. I suggest one copy. Passing around that single copy of a picture prompts the conversations.
Those Who are Gone: Go Through Funeral Cards, Prayer Cards
If your family keeps funeral cards or prayer cards, go through them. Read out the names and dates. Pass them around. You can learn about family members you never met or barely knew.
Send Your Own Generational Wisdom Questions
If you have the perfect question to spark a conversation, let me know. I appreciate any ideas you have.
You can send your ideas on the Contact Us page.
