What will happen to your children, your money, and your possessions when you’re gone? You can easily draw up a plan to answer all those questions in do-it-yourself will kits available online and in stores.
But legal experts warn that such simple documents can raise more questions than they answer.
Will kits will save you a lot of money in the short term. You can buy them for a little as $8.95.
Paying a lawyer to draft a will can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, depending on the complexity of your estate.
Seventy percent of people die without a will. State law decides how to divide your assets without a will. Will kits and handwritten wills can result in vague language that could lead into unintended family squabbles.
For example: In a homemade will, a women leaves all her “personal monies” to her siblings, the rest of her estate to her husband. After her death, the siblings challenge the will, claiming that “personal monies” applied not only to several small bank accounts, but to hundreds of thousands in bank investments. The husband was sure that her intention was to leave him the bulk of her estate. After a long court battle, he prevailed.
The cost of making a will would have been an infinitesimal amount compared to what was expended here, said Barry Fish, co-author of The Family Fight: Planning to Avoid It, which devotes a chapter to problems with homemade wills. “You need a second, sober mind focusing on what’s going to happen after you’re gone.”
Besides problematic wording, homemade wills don’t always address important issues, such as joint ownership, powers of attorney, trust funds and guardianship of minor children.
Some wills are based on assumptions that may not hold true: that their children will outlive them; that their children’s marriages will be permanent.
A homemade will also could be invalid if it is not executed in the proper way before two witnesses and a notary public, homemade wills are easier to challenge, because they are not witnessed by a lawyer.
The purpose of a will is to insure your wishes are carried out after your death and to make things easy for your surviving loved ones to set along rather than to fight over what you accumulated over a lifetime. The cost of a well written will, will save more than it costs.
