Unfortunately, when you create a Will with a lawyer or solicitor you really have no idea how long that Will is going to last. By the time you get home from the lawyer’s office, your Will could be out of date. There’s a standard set of reasons for updating your Will that you’ll find on many lawyers’ websites. These include obvious things like a change in marital status, birth of a new child or the death of a family member or beneficiary. Clearly, updating a Will immediately having a child may not be at the forefront of your mind, and sadly we do see countless examples of parents of young children not getting around to writing a new Will immediately after a child is born.

In reality though, the need to update a Will is more nuanced than that. You not only have to look at changes to your own situation, but also any changes in circumstance of anybody, or anything, mentioned in your Will. So, here’s a little test, which of these situations might prompt an update to your Will?

• The person that you have named as your Executor has been convicted of a crime and is serving time in prison.
• The person that you have named as personal guardian for your children has had triplets of their own
• You have purchased a new summer property
• Your daughter has got married
• Your son is proving to be extremely irresponsible with his money
• Your alternate Executor has died
• You have sold your house
• Your Executor has changed their name

I think for most of these examples, the recommendation would be to update your Will, but when you are working with a legal professional, it may seem an expensive and inconvenient proposition to book an appointment to make a relatively trivial change. This is why many people are turning to online services like the ones at LegalWills.ca , LegalWills.co.uk and USLegalWills.com. These services allow you to set up an account, from which you can update your Will whenever you need to. You then make the change, print the new document and sign it in the presence of two witnesses to create a new legal Last Will and Testament.

Some people update their Will every few months based on their interactions with the people around them; a dinner party gone wrong, a snubbed invitation, an unwelcome comment about an inheritance. You are certainly free to update your Will whenever you wish, but going through this exercise every time a beneficiary falls in and out of favour will not necessarily result in your estate plan reflecting your final wishes. It may make more sense to update your Will after a change in circumstance rather than a change in heart.

The most important message is that an outdated Will can be worse than no Will at all. You should double check your Will whenever there is a significant event for anybody mentioned in the document and make any required changes. At a bear minimum you should read through your Will once a year to confirm that it still reflects your wishes and that your instructions can still be carried out.

The property of a deceased person is utilized for paying off the probate and making payment for his own funeral expenses. Then the amount that is remaining is used for paying off the debts. In this situation, the debts will be paid off first before the property is distributed among the beneficiaries. Therefore, a deceased person’s credit card debts will be paid off before the property is distributed among his beneficiaries. 

Know whether a Will can distribute secured debts:

But if you have secured debts then the creditor can repossess your property if the debts are not paid off. But there is an exception to this rule if you have secured debts. If the deceased person has taken loan against collateral in this case the property will be distributed among the beneficiaries but the debt will go with it. For instance if a deceased person takes out a mortgage loan but the house is left for someone in the last will then it will be the beneficiary’s obligation to pay off the loan.

Know the consequences when you owe more than you own:

You cannot inherit your father’s debt in general but if your father owes more than he owns then the estate property will be sold out completely to pay off the debts. In this situation, you will not inherit the property but it will be used to pay off the debts.

You are required to pay off the estate or gift taxes according to the Last Will and Testament. The executor’s name that has been mentioned in the last “Will” of the deceased person shall decide which pieces of property will be sold to pay off the debts.

Can debts be received and forgiven in a Will?

If a deceased person owes money then this money will be accumulated and added to his beneficiaries overall estate. In the last will of a deceased person the debts can be chosen to be forgiven. In this situation, the deceased person does not leave property but provide forgiveness of a specific debt.

There are definitely certain legal elements that have to belong in every Will and it is possible that in attempting to handwrite a Will from scratch, these elements can be overlooked. An example  of how it can all go wrong made the press last month in the case of Irish poet John O’Donohue and his €2 million estate.

Mr O’Donohue was an educated man, he wrote poetry and philosophy for a living, so it would seem that writing a Will should be easily within his intellectual capabilities. Particularly when his wishes were seemingly quite straightforward; he wanted everything that he owned to go to his mother to be divided equally between his family. But he made at least two terrible mistakes in his Will. He went on to wish that his sister was to receive extra care and help and that some funds should go as specific bequests to other individuals. Generally a court would try and respect a person’s wishes if they can be deciphered, but in this Will there were both “mutually exclusive” wishes and there were also extra bequests that could not be quantified or sourced. In other words, you can’t say “leave everythingI own to John Doe and leave a half of everything I own to Jane Doe”.

The other critical mistake was that the witnesses to the signing of the document were his mother and brother; both beneficiaries  in the Will. This alone in most jurisdictions would nullify the Will as there would always be a suspicion of coercion if the witnesses are also beneficiaries.

So, what are the important lessons here? At first it would be easy to make this a shining example of why you should not prepare your own Will, but I think this is an over-reaction. If you use an interactive service like the one at LegalWills.ca, USLegalWills.com and LegalWills.co.uk you are guided through the process each step of the way. The signing instructions are included as part of the service, and yes, it is a good idea to read them. Put simply, to make your document legal it must be signed in the presence of two (or sometimes three depending on the jurisdiction) witnesses who cannot benefit from the contents of the Will. This means beneficiaries for sure, and also in some places the spouse of a beneficiary cannot serve as a witness. They are some other criteria as well; adults, of sound mind etc.

It is also important to read through one’s Will once it is completed to make sure there are no conflicting requests. You can’t leave the same thing to more than one person.

John O’Donohue’s story is a sad one (not so much for his mother who ended up inheriting everything), but it should not scare people away from writing their own Will. If you have a straightforward situation it is well within the capabilities of most people to use an interactive tool to prepare their Will. However, do not use a blank kit, and do not attempt to write one yourself starting with a blank piece of paper.

New Year’s Resolutions are often made in the area of healthcare and financial wellbeing, and these are the very areas addressed in a complete estate plan. Two key healthcare documents are the Living Will and Power of Attorney which allow you to both express your own wishes if you are ever unable to speak for yourself, and also allow you to appoint somebody to make both financial and healthcare decisions on your behalf. Along with eating a healthier diet, and working out, it should be a resolution to get the most important documents in place; life insurance, powers of attorney and a living Will.

Financially there is probably no more important document than a Last Will and Testament, it is part of a sound financial plan and not a document to be written just before you die (chances are, when your death is imminent it will not be a convenient time to write a Will).   The New Year is a great time to either create a Will, or review one that is already in place. It makes sense to; review your choice of personal guardian for your children, make sure that you have chosen the most appropriate person to serve as Executor of your estate, and take another look at your beneficiaries. So you may have a resolution to keep an eye on your spending, save money where possible, try to increase your income. But the most important step in your financial planning is to put your Last Will and Testament together.

It only takes about 30 minutes and is very affordable if you use one of the interactive online services now available like www.legalwills.ca , www.uslegalwills.com and www.legalwills.co.uk. There is no legal requirement to pay for the services of a lawyer or solicitor to create a Will, everybody has a legal right to prepare their own Will.

So why not cross one resolution off today and get your estate planning documents in order?

The market is becoming crowded for online Will services.

At www.legalwills.ca , www.uslegalwills.com and www.legalwills.co.uk we charge $34.95 and  £24.95. We do this because we have worked with top legal teams in Canada, the US and UK to create our services. We have a support team in place who can help users step through the process and we have professional affiliations. We also stand by our services as top quality, legal, affordable alternatives to seeking legal advice. We know that our service is not appropriate for everybody, and we often recommend that some people with complicated situations not use our service and instead seek legal advice.

So what does a $5 Last Will and Testament give you? Some websites operate like the Giant Tiger of legal forms; they have hundreds or thousands of downloadable PDF’s which probably will not work for you; there will be no alternate provisions, help text, support, residual beneficiaries, minor trusts, and it is quite possible that you will write something in your Will that is simply not legally permitted e.g. disinheriting dependents. But a $5 Will company does not care about this.

I’m actually surprised by the quality of many online sites that claim to have been created by lawyers. They obviously have no concerns that a large number of people will use their service thinking that they have a legal Will, when many will be legally invalid. I’m not sure how the law societies will feel about the quality of product being created by these lawyers. Sadly, we cannot compete on price with a downloadable pdf form. But we do feel good about our service and know that quality legal documents have been created by tens of thousands of people.

Many articles talk about the dangers of preparing your own Will, and it is really the cheap, daily discount Wills that are being dismissed in these articles. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to discern a quality online service and a poor one. Look for services that are interactive (not downloadable blank forms), have been in place for a while, have online help with phone and email support, and a service that generates a final document that runs at least 4-5 pages. If it doesn’t, then it has not included all of the clauses that should be in a basic Will. I wish I could just list services that you should not use, but that is probably a bad idea.

Once again, we will deconstruct the arguments and explain why many people are more than capable of preparing their own Will. Remember, everybody has a right to prepare their own Will and there is nothing that a lawyer can do to make a Will more legal. You go to a lawyer if you need legal advice, there is no legal requirement to use professional help to prepare your own Last Will and Testament. So let’s look at the arguments;

1.    Attorney costs are minimal

I suppose this really depends on your definition of “minimal”. The article explains that an attorney may cost as little as $1000, which could be a “mere 1%” of the value of your estate. Here lies the problem. $1,000 is a heck of a lot of money to pay for something that is drafted in a few minutes by a computer program. Don’t have the mistaken belief that a lawyer will carefully draft your Will starting with a blank piece of paper. They plug your details into a computer program that generates a Will. In fact, it’s a remarkably similar process than the one we use at www.legalwills.ca, www.legalwills.co.uk and www.uslegalwills.com . Except we charge $34.95 and £24.95. If you think that $1,000 isn’t a lot of money, then by all means go and pay for a lawyer, but for the rest of us, an online tool can be equally effective and more affordable.

2.   A Will must be error free

This is true, and the example that is always given is that the document must be signed in the presence of two witnesses that are not beneficiaries in the Will. This is correct, and we reiterate this point throughout our service. Yes, you have to sign the document in the presence of two witnesses. If you can do this, your document will have been signed appropriately and legally. The other examples that the article uses to illustrate the point are a little odd; it claims that people forget to update their Will. This is always one of our main arguments for using an online service. You can update your document at any time no matter how trivial the change may be. If you use a professional, you may be faced with that $1,000 fee every time you return to make a change. Forgetting to update your Will is not specific to preparing one’s own Will and is in fact far more likely to be an issue for anybody who sought professional help in preparing the original document.

3.    Vague Wording Used in a Will May Cause Confusion

This is definitely an important point for anybody considering writing their own Will starting with a blank form or blank Will kit. But the DIY Will service has progressed a little over the last decade. The article claims that “An attorney will use standard language that doesn’t equivocate”. Well guess what; so does an online interactive software program. In fact, it uses the exact same language that the attorney will use.

4.     Your Assumptions for Writing a Will Are Likely Incorrect

The example given to illustrate this point is “If you will property to an heir, what happens if you outlive that heir?”. Oh dear, this is called an alternate plan or alternate provision. It is built into any service and our service at LegalWills does not allow any bequest to be made without there being an alternate plan and a residual beneficiary. Many online services may not have this, but quality services will have this built in.

5.   A Handwritten Will May Be Considered Invalid

The other misplaced notion is that you would be prying into the financial affairs of your parents. Of course, asking if your parents have a Will does not require that you are privy to the contents of that Will. Parents can just let you know that yes, they have a Will, you may be the Executor of that Will, the rest can wait until after they have passed away.

Why do you even need to know if a Will is in place? Because a parent dying with a Will, and a parent dying without a Will are two very different experiences.

When a single remaining parent passes away and their Will is in place, the Executor takes that Will to the probate courts, is granted permission to administer the estate and take care of the funeral plans. With this court document they are able to go to the banks and financial institutions and gather the assets of the estate to be distributed according to the wishes outline in the Will. Everything can be resolved in a matter of weeks.

Without a Will different people may apply to the courts to administer the estate. No asset can be touched until the court appointed administrator has been assigned. The estate will then be distributed according to the laws of that jurisdiction which may require certain assets for example, real estate, to be liquidated. The whole process is likely to take months rather than weeks, no asset can be touched in the meantime and the distribution of the assets will not likely match the wishes of the person who died. Arguments and family divisions are far more likely with children squabbling over everything from the funeral plans to the ownership of individual items. And there is actually quite a high probability that some assets are never even discovered.

Parents who die without a Will end up creating problems for their children, so have the discussion. Just ask if a Will is in place and ask if it has been updated in recent memory. You need not pry and you are not hastening the demise of your parents by asking the question. If the answer is no, you should let them know that it need not be expensive, and can be done in 30 minutes or less at sites like LegalWills.ca, LegalWills.co.uk and USLegalWills.com.

As our caller noted; you have to shop around for a legal professional to help you, and make a selection by trying to establish legal fees vs quality of service. We know that lawyers can charge anything from $100 to $5,000 or £100 to £2,000. Somehow, everybody is expected to understand why there is such a variation. Next, you have to book an appointment, and then take the time to head to this lawyer’s office and hope that you have all of the answers to all of the questions. If you don’t, you will need to book a follow-up appointment and then hope that nothing changes in your life because you would then need to book another appointment. Each time, these appointments will take up your lawyer’s time and ultimately cost money. If a couple require reciprocal Wills they will probably need to book a time that works for both spouses. They will definitely need to update their Will when they have a newborn child, so they may need to take their baby to the appointment with them.

This all ties into these survey results. 22 percent of respondents said that their health was good enough that they didn’t need a Will. Most people planned to leave the creation of a Will for when they were older. In other words, when they were less busy with their packed schedules, and less likely to have to change it again in the future. The inconvenience factor forces people to consider the creation of a Will a once in a lifetime task rather than an ongoing part of their financial planning.

There are some lawyers who will do house calls (this picture is actually in our neighbourhood) and some will try to fit in with your schedule, but certainly not all. This is why services like the one at LegalWills.ca, USLegalWills.com and LegalWills.co.uk are becoming increasingly popular. Yes, they are much more affordable than having a Will drawn up by a legal professional, but the real benefit is that you can create your Will anytime, anyplace, as long as you have access to a computer, the internet and a printer. Need to make an update? just login to your account, make a change and print a new document. The process takes minutes rather than half a day and it can be written last thing at night after the children have gone to bed !

Everybody needs a Will, even if you think you have nothing worth leaving (you don’t know what your estate will be worth when you die) or even if you think it’s obvious where your assets will be distributed (it’s a much simple process with a Will than without one). So don’t be like the 30 million Brits and get your Will written.

Just a reminder; a codicil is a document that makes reference to the original Will, describes the required change and is then signed and witnessed in exactly the same way as a full Last Will and Testament. In practice this rarely serves as a shortcut because the signing requirements are the same. Furthermore, it is probably more difficult to write your own codicil as it is to write your own Will as there are very few resources and tools available to help in the process. There is still a certain amount of “legalese” that needs to appear in a codicil; statements like “in all other aspects I reaffirm my Will dated …..” which is not a sentence that comes naturally to most people. Codicils were popular back in the day because it saved typing out the whole 5 page document again, but of course, in today’s world of computers and printers, there is absolutely no time-saving. Unfortunately, people have a dangerous misconception that a codicil can simply be written and attached to the Will and this attachment has the same legal weight as the Will itself. Don’t believe me? then this news article from earlier this week demonstrates exactly the issue. A woman’s stepfather sadly killed himself and left a suicide note, then according to the article he:

“also left an addendum to his will – increasing Decatur’s inheritance to $100,000. The bulk of Badini’s $1.18 million estate is going to a well-known children’s charity. In his first will – Badini, a member of the Masonic Lodge – willed everything to their Shriners Hospitals for Children. Despite Badini’s handwritten change – it, and two earlier revisions, known legally as codicils – are being challenged….Richard Lyon, the attorney representing Shriners Hospitals told FOX 5: “It is our opinion that the judge should not have accepted the codicils.” Lyon says a probate judge entered the will and the codicils before anyone from Shriners Hospitals was aware of them. Here is the problem. The changes Badini made were not signed by any witnesses. Maryland law requires two witness signatures.”

That the codicils were ever accepted by the Probate courts is a complete mystery; these handwritten amendments to the Will are completely worthless under the law of this jurisdiction.

So our message remains the same. The easiest way to keep a Will updated to reflect a change of circumstance or a change of heart is to use an online service like those at LegalWills.ca , LegalWills.co.uk and USLegalWills.com . You can not only create your Will, but you can return at any time to make an update and then create a new Will to reflect a change on your personal or financial situation. It’s bad enough that 70 percent of adults don’t have a legal Will, but even worse that most people with a Will don’t maintain them because it is very inconvenient and expensive to do so. This unfortunate case shows that while in a desperate state, the last thing on this man’s mind was booking an appointment with a lawyer to prepare a new Will.

I thought today would be a good day to dissect one of the typical blog articles written by a law practice entitled “Dangers of Drafting a Last Will and Testament on Your Own” posted just at the end of last week. Here are the five key dangers and after each one, our response.

1.   “Wills you draft on your own are easier to contest as it is hard to personalize the specific needs of the individual drafting the Will, which can result in issues later on when interpreting the Will.”

Not really sure where to start with this one. Easier to contest is a strange claim because as we discussed in a previous post there are specific reasons why a challenge to a Will is likely to be successful. These are; mental capacity, undue influence, improper execution, fraud and lack of provision for dependents. There is nothing that makes a will written using software more or less likely to be challenged than a Will written by a solicitor as long as it is signed appropriately and no dependents are being disinherited. I am not sure why a software service like the one at LegalWills doesn’t allow for the “Personalizing the specific needs of the individual” and feel it is fear-mongering to suggest that a service like ours would result in a Will that is going to be challenged. In fact, Google “challenging of the Will” and all examples will be for Wills prepared by a lawyer or solicitor – so be warned, there is nothing in a lawyer prepared Will that makes it incontestable. Most newsworthy Will challenge today? Arturo Gatti – a will written by a legal professional in Quebec .

2.   “There is a greater risk associated with drafting your own Will regarding execution. For example, in Ohio, an individual’s Will needs to be signed at the end by the individual making it, and be attested and subscribed in the presence of such party by two or more competent witnesses, who saw the testator subscribe, or heard him acknowledge his/her signature.”

We really have to get over this one, it is not complicated. Yes, your Will has to be signed in the presence of two witnesses who have no vested interest in the contents of the document. They cannot be beneficiaries and in some jurisdictions, they cannot be the spouse of a beneficiary. It comes down to that suspicion of coercion or undue influence. Obviously a beneficiary witnessing the signing is going to look suspicious and that’s why it isn’t allowed. But, this is hardly a reason to seek legal advice from a lawyer. I would propose that anybody with the capacity to step through our service would be able to understand the signing requirements (and we describe them in a number of places). If you are not sure that you understand these signing requirements, then you should probably have your Will prepared by a lawyer.

3. “Wills drafted on your own may be difficult to update when life changing events occur such as divorce or a birth of a child.”

Utterly false. With a service like LegalWills.ca, USLegalWills.com and LegalWills.co.uk you can login to your account at any time, make a change, print a new document and sign the document in the presence of two witnesses to have a brand new, up-to-date Will. It could not be simpler and it is significantly more convenient and affordable than booking an appointment with your lawyer or solicitor every time you feel that you need to update your Will.

4. “Wills that are drafted on your own may contain errors, and therefore, make your will invalid by the Probate Court. If this occurs, it will be the Probate Court that makes the determination of how your estate will be distributed.”

Yes, and so may a Will drafted by a lawyer. However, being that you are preparing your own Will, you are at least likely to read through it to make sure that it reflects your wishes. We actually wrote a blog post discussing how important it is to understand your Last Will and Testament. The legal clauses inserted into our documents are the exact same clauses used by lawyers so if you read through your Will you are the person most likely to understand whether an error has been made.

5. “Additionally, you may believe that you are leaving all of your assets to a certain individual, but you may inherit assets from someone, which in turn may not be included as part of your Will. If and when that happens, your relatives may be contesting your Will in Probate Court.”

This might be one of the most convoluted reasons for steering people away from preparing their own Will I have ever seen. Any Will would include a residuary beneficiary who inherits everything after taxes, debts and specific bequests have been distributed. This example of one of the dangers of preparing your own Will makes absolutely no sense.

The blog post concludes “Bottom line, it is worth the money to have an attorney prepare your Last Will and Testament”. Unfortunately, if these are the best 5 reasons to not prepare your own Will, we would strongly recommend clicking one of the links on the top left of this page and you can have your legal Last Will and Testament in your hands in about 30 minutes.