From budgeting apps to online legal forms, DIY tools are everywhere. But when it comes to estate planning, trying to handle everything yourself can come at a high cost. Even simple mistakes can lead to legal battles, tax issues, or unintended consequences for your loved ones. This article explores the real risks of going it alone and explains:
- How attorneys identify hidden problems and offer better-tailored options than online services.
- Why only a licensed attorney can provide legal advice, including the pros and cons of your choices.
- What really happens when a DIY estate plan goes wrong – and why it’s often too late to fix it.
How Does An Attorney Add Value Beyond What DIY Estate Planning Services Provide?
There are a lot of practical advantages when you work with an attorney directly.
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Anticipating Problems And Offering Options
For one thing, we know what to look for. We can talk with you about your family situation and identify the things that you never thought of or would never have realized were a potential issue. We can bring these up and let you know what your options are. We understand what to look for, which saves you a lot of time and avoids the possibility of overlooking something significant.
Without an attorney, you might not realize how many options are available or that the option you are considering will not work. But an attorney will be able to direct you toward a different option that will work.
Best of all, being able to understand what you can do can be both empowering and very freeing – especially when you find a tool or option that will work really well for you and your family. When you are working with an attorney, we can customize and tailor what we offer to your situation. Rather than throw everything at you, the equivalent of a 1000-page book, you get something that fits your objectives and your family situation.
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Comparing Advantages And Disadvantages
Another substantial advantage of working with an attorney is being able to go over the pros and cons. You might know that lawyers can give legal advice, but you might not realize that nobody else can. If you are working with an online service or a paralegal service, they cannot give you legal advice so they can’t outline the pros and cons that different options have with your situation.
They can help you fill out a form correctly or draft a document for you based on your specific instructions, but they can’t apply law to facts, which means they can’t explain how your plan will work for your family or the pros and cons of your choice. They are not permitted to do so by law, and they do not have the training, ethical responsibilities, or legal accountability that goes along with all of that.
Getting the pros and cons of any kind of decision you are thinking about can be very helpful, especially for couples who are trying to negotiate with each other. Having that list of pros and cons can be essential when making a final decision about what works best in your situation.
Attorney Rebecca Sommer is a highly experienced California estate planning lawyer who has helped countless families create simple or intricate estate plans, or deal with the aftermath of failing to do so. Her background in financial services allows her to create plans tailored to your situation, and optimized for tax purposes, which are two of the most common areas DIY estate planning breaks down.
Want to avoid the problems of a DIY estate plan? Have you made a plan and want to get it double-checked? Contact The Law Office Of Rebecca Sommer today to schedule a free initial consultation.
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Practical Impacts And Implications
Finally, attorneys understand the practical impacts of your choices in a way no online tool ever can, because they see the family fights firsthand. We see what works and what does not work, even in cases we never worked on. For example, by studying the cases that end up going to an appellate court for review, we see the mistakes that other families have made and their consequences.
A lawyer brings their knowledge of practical impacts and stakes well beyond our knowledge of legalese or our ability to correctly use and write down a bunch of legal terms. We actively help you understand how the estate plan is going to work for your family and what your family needs from your estate plan.
For example, we know that if you give somebody who has financial mismanagement in their history a lump sum all at once, there is a decent chance that it will not go the way you want it to. If you have a child with some financial management issues, but you want to give them everything, a lawyer can orient you toward a tiered distribution.
Such practical advice, in a lot of cases, can be very helpful, both for avoiding family fights or to accomplishing your goals so that they work out as you intended.
What Happens When A DIY Estate Plan Goes Wrong?
When things go badly in estate planning, especially because of a DIY plan, it is a very frustrating situation for everyone, including your lawyer. I always want what is best for my clients.
But when you are stuck in a situation caused by poorly worded or incomplete estate planning, I may have to tell you that there is nothing we can do about it, that you cannot change the situation without going to court, or that something does not work as you think it should. And that can be very unpleasant for everyone involved.
Inevitably, in such situations, the person who did the DIY plan has passed away or has become incapacitated, so it is far too late to start over. Instead, I will be dealing with the family who have had to take over and are struggling. Unfortunately, in such cases, I am usually the bearer of a lot of bad news.
For example, I might have to tell you that you’ll need to go to court to resolve the issue, or that you’re stuck with the plan as it is – even if it doesn’t serve your family well and clearly isn’t what your parents said they wanted.
Unfortunately, a lot of people who do their own DIY estate plans never find out how bad of a situation they put their family in because they are already either gone or incapacitated, so they do not understand or bear the cost.
When I work with people who have the good sense to come in for a review of their DIY estate plan, we can usually fix the issues they’ve created. Even so, it often ends up costing more time and money than if they had come to an attorney from the start.
That’s because once a plan is in place (especially one that doesn’t work) it usually has to be revised or completely redone after they fully understand the risks and consequences. In the end, clients are often relieved once the corrected plan is in place, and their families will be too. But reworking everything from scratch is rarely a pleasant process.
Thinking Of Creating A DIY Estate Plan? Save Yourself And Your Family Trouble By Working With An Attorney Instead
For more information on DIY estate planning risks in California, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (657) 571-1241 today.
Attorney Rebecca Sommer is a highly experienced California estate planning lawyer who has helped countless families create simple or intricate estate plans, or deal with the aftermath of failing to do so. Her background in financial services allows her to create plans tailored to your situation, and optimized for tax purposes, which are two of the most common areas DIY estate planning breaks down.
Want to avoid the problems of a DIY estate plan? Have you made a plan and want to get it double-checked? Contact The Law Office Of Rebecca Sommer today to schedule a free initial consultation.
