Writing your own Will without lawyer

AKBill

AKBill

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AKBill
Wondering if anyone has experience writing their own Will without a lawyer. I would think if you write a Will and get it notarized that should be all you need to do.

I guess it depends on the state you live in and how the laws are set up. Again guessing I would think the Alaska laws would allow this.
 
The only time it would matter is is you have assets to assign, and for that you’d be better off with a lawyer’s guidance.
 
AKBill said:
Wondering if anyone has experience writing their own Will without a lawyer.
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AKBill said:
I guess it depends on the state you live in and how the laws are set up
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FWIW: not saying it can't be done as that is what I had done at first. However, years ago on a whim I had an attorney customer of mine review my DIY Will which he quickly showed me where my verbiage didn't meet the requirements of the state's succession laws which I corrected. In the end however, just prior to retirement I elected to have an attorney draw up a new will to ensure my wishes are fulfilled under state law as I have no legal heirs. So depending on the complexity of your estate at a minimum you should at least know what is required to be in a will in AK.
 
Or, depending on your state law, bypass probate and associated taxes and designate beneficiaries or payment on death recipients on your accounts. When you die, they get the assets with the stroke of a pen. If you have cars or real property then it may get a bit more complicated depending on how it's titled.
 
My wife and I did ours through a website like legalzoom or similar, just can’t remember which site exactly. It may not fit your plans but we had a pretty straight forward plan for our kids and property. We did a living Will then as well just in case. Was not very expensive either. Just helped my dad do one on legalzoom a couple weeks ago as well. I’m not a legal expert by any means though so maybe they don’t hold up well under attack.


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My guess is that there is likely a template on-line that would help with initially
determining your distribution. I DO agree with Bell that having an attorney review
the document is a very, very good idea. Not everyone will be happy with your choices and may contest this in court. In the interval before things are settled
some assets ( airplane ?) may deteriorate and have little value.Common for survivors to stop paying hangar rent. Then it’s auctioned off and the hangar provider gets paid and little left over.
Remember ; you won’t be around to clarify!
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Or, depending on your state law, bypass probate and associated taxes and designate beneficiaries or payment on death recipients on your accounts. When you die, they get the assets with the stroke of a pen. If you have cars or real property then it may get a bit more complicated depending on how it's titled.
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That requires setting up a trust and transferring assets into the trust. Definitely attorney territory.
 
Stewartb said:
That requires setting up a trust and transferring assets into the trust. Definitely attorney territory.
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Not for liquid assets, cd's or stocks and such. Real property is a different story. Payment on death means just that. The owner dies, the designee gets paid. The desinee can be a person, multiple person a trust or an estate. Biggest benefit is, no probate and no need for a will.
 
I’m sure that attorneys love wills and big families, disputes arise and the lawyers get most of your money. The death turns into a time consuming fight. I would think you could allocate some or most of your estate prior to death if you’re getting older so you know it’s going where you want to. Too many times, I’ve seen or heard of estates not being distributed properly, internal family arguments, assets sold off at a huge discount to satisfy an argument minus fees, a lot less than what you had is going where you intended it to go.
 
You need to get the wording correct to avoid it being worthless. Specifically, just notarizing it doesn't cut it in most states. You'll also need witnesses and a proper "self-proving affidavit."

Frankly, a will isn't all you likely need. We got the wills (primarily only for stuff not covered elsewhere), but living trusts, as well as general and medical powers of attorney and advance medical directives. The also provided the stuff I needed to get the property moved into the trust (just having a trust does nothing, it's like opening a bank account and not making any deposits).
 
With a little due diligence and research, it is not that difficult. We are WAY to conditioned to think we need attorneys for stuff like this. Don't waste your money.
 
AKBill said:
Wondering if anyone has experience writing their own Will without a lawyer. I would think if you write a Will and get it notarized that should be all you need to do.

I guess it depends on the state you live in and how the laws are set up. Again guessing I would think the Alaska laws would allow this.
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I did it. Really wasn't much to the Will though. Our properties were put in a Trust. Money was done via beneficiary designation. We used one of those DIY estate things. I think it was the Nolo Press. Google do it yourself estate planning. Here, I started it out for you. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/alaska-estate-planning Or just copy, paste, print, sign and Notarize this and send me a copy. I, AKBill leave all my stuff to luvflyin
 
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MtnMarcus said:
With a little due diligence and research, it is not that difficult. We are WAY to conditioned to think we need attorneys for stuff like this. Don't waste your money.
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This is so true. If you have the time to read, learn, execute and record some documents there are all kinds of things you can do that most folk hire someone else to do.
 
A great lawyer might be great, but how do you know you have a great lawyer. For a will, you won’t know the outcome until after you’re dead, so you’ll never know. Why feed the blood suckers lol.
 
Even if a will was properly written/signed/witnessed according to the rules at that time, there is no guarantee that it will still be valid years later. My Mom and Dad had wills drawn up a long time ago, perhaps in the 70's. However, those wills were not technically valid when they passed away. Fortunately (so-to-speak), they had so little assets and no fighting among the designated heirs that it wasn't worth worrying about it (per advice from a probate attorney... amazingly, it was free advice).
 
I'm the executor and later trustee of 4 different estates.

My recommendations are:

A) Don't try and control people from the grave. That gets complicated and often requires lawyers and gnashing of teeth.

B) Keep it simple. Don't make claims in the will that cannot be enforced. Maybe you own your house jointly with your wife. Upon your death, you can't unilaterally decide to give it to your son/daughter/dog/neighbor.

C) Pick someone with a strong will as your executor who won't easily be swayed from your instructions.
 
Amusing.

I’ve probated a few DIY wills. If the decedent thought they were saving money, we’ll, they were…up front. It’s the cost of remedying their errors post-death that they never see. But the family does.
 
I’ll never again agree to witness someone’s do-it-yourself will.

The lady died, and the sole heir found that the will (which had been prepared by another relative for free on the internet) was not prepared correctly; it was not self-proving in her state. Nobody challenged the will, it just wasn’t good.

As the only living witness, I was subjected to major hassles by the heir’s attorney.

The heir was plenty unhappy. I was plenty unhappy. A lawyer up front would have avoided a lot of grief.
 
And for God's sake, do NOT name co-executors and/or shared powers of attorney wher both must sign For some reason people get the idea that having their offspring decide and execute these things together makes them work together and prevents acrimony. IT DOESN'T! It only makes the simple difficult and the difficult impossible.

Choose one!
 
Chip Sylverne said:
And for God's sake, do NOT name co-executors and/or shared powers of attorney wher both must sign For some reason people get the idea that having their offspring decide and execute these things together makes them work together and prevents acrimony. IT DOESN'T! It only makes the simple difficult and the difficult impossible.

Choose one!
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I second this.
 
kyleb said:
I'm the executor and later trustee of 4 different estates.

My recommendations are:

A) Don't try and control people from the grave. That gets complicated and often requires lawyers and gnashing of teeth.

B) Keep it simple. Don't make claims in the will that cannot be enforced. Maybe you own your house jointly with your wife. Upon your death, you can't unilaterally decide to give it to your son/daughter/dog/neighbor.

C) Pick someone with a strong will as your executor who won't easily be swayed from your instructions.
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You, Sir, are a Saint. My advice to anyone offered the honor of being executor of an estate is graciously decline and run like hell!
 
AKBill said:
Wondering if anyone has experience writing their own Will without a lawyer. I would think if you write a Will and get it notarized that should be all you need to do.
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That was my plan but 1 hr with a lawyer and $300 fee, the guy saved my heirs almost 100x that amount in taxes by using obscure laws that I had no idea existed. Lesson learned.
 
Stewartb said:
That requires setting up a trust and transferring assets into the trust. Definitely attorney territory.
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You can name any one for payment on death for your bank accounts and beneficiary on your retirement accounts and life insurance without a trust.
 
martym said:
That was my plan but 1 hr with a lawyer and $300 fee, the guy saved my heirs almost 100x that amount in taxes by using obscure laws that I had no idea existed. Lesson learned.
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Well, he hasn't saved them anything yet. ;)
 
Chip Sylverne said:
And for God's sake, do NOT name co-executors and/or shared powers of attorney wher both must sign For some reason people get the idea that having their offspring decide and execute these things together makes them work together and prevents acrimony. IT DOESN'T! It only makes the simple difficult and the difficult impossible.

Choose one!
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Siblings don't always battle over the estate. My two sisters and I were quite civil.
 
Clip4 said:
You can name any one for payment on death for your bank accounts
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FYI: Not all states honor payable on death (POD) or transfer on death (TOD) bank/institutional documents. Financial investment/life insurance designated beneficiaries follow a separate clause in most cases. State succession laws can be very specific regardless what personal at a bank or financial institution tell you.
 
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And furthermore...(please pardon the venting, but I'm ass deep in an estate distribution now) when did banks become so incompetent? I've had 3 challenge perfectly executed powers of attorney and send them to their legal counsel for opinions, only to be approved. One that made me produce in person my 94 year old mother in law before they would transfer accounts held jointly in her and her deceased husband's names and one who wanted to demand a death certificate when changing the POD on an account in my MIL's name to her 2 daughters after the previous beneficiary, her husband, passed. Its just ludicrous how difficult this has become as banks have gotten larger. Bank of America is the worst. If you think you're going to March into a bank POA in hand and get anything done in an afternoon, think again.

Don't even get me started on Social Security. They are still sending checks 6 mos later, after having been notified by both the funeral director and the executor of the estate. So now the final tax return will have to declare that as income, and when they finally get around to debit the account, the "loss" will have be taken on her next years return, or the estate remain open until the tax matters are settled.

Finally, the poor guy was suffering from a tough of dementia toward the end, so any offer, credit card, checking account etc. that offered a few bucks back he went for. I never know what's coming in the mail, and of course any account that was opened without a beneficiary becomes part of the estate for probate purposes.

And cancelling or getting a name change on a Verizon or Comcast account? They act like you're trying to bust into Fort Knox. The Verizon CSR kept trying to tell that they needed to speak to the account holder to make the change. Finally I just lost my grip and started shouting into the phone "Lady, he's DEAD! You want to speak to a DEAD PERSON about transferring his phone? Are you a medium? You wanna hold a SEANCE?"
She hung up on me. I don't blame her but Christ was she stupid.

Worst of all, this is seriously biting into my flying time!
 
Bob Noel said:
Siblings don't always battle over the estate. My two sisters and I were quite civil.
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Not always a matter of battling it out. Sometimes it's just the logistics of getting a single document signed and notarized by both parties at the same location at the same time when they reside in different states.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Bank of America is the worst. If you think you're going to March into a bank POA in hand and get anything done in an afternoon, think again.
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Here in Georgia, it is common practice to have a single document that is the Last Will and Testament AND the Trust document.

BOA absolutely cannot get its head around this. On at least two...actually, I think three of the estates/trusts I've handled, BOA was happy to accept that document as a will, but wouldn't create an account for the follow-on trust. Bizarre.

And don't get me started on one of the local credit unions. When I was managing my cousin's estate, they threw every possible roadblock in the way over <$10K in a checking account. I think I had 3-4 in-office sit downs with them before I got a check made out to the estate, despite showing up the first time with every legally required document. Every time, it cost me a half day of work.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
And for God's sake, do NOT name co-executors and/or shared powers of attorney wher both must sign For some reason people get the idea that having their offspring decide and execute these things together makes them work together and prevents acrimony. IT DOESN'T! It only makes the simple difficult and the difficult impossible.

Choose one!
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Let’s take this a step further. Do not appoint a Beneficiary as Trustee of a Trust. As an Executer of a Will isn’t as subject to self dealing because there is Judicial oversight.
 
This is one part of life where an attorney is well worth his or her fee. DW and I spent about $1k each IIRC for a will, living will, and durable power of attorney for each. As far as I'm concerned, the heirs paid for it, and I made a good investment on their behalf. They will be glad we did when the time comes.
 
Thanks for all the comments.. Tami and I talked, she has a friend who is a retired lawyer. Tami's friend said she would be more than happy to help us out with the Will for both of us. All is good, I officially retired 1-17-22. Just trying to let it all sink in. Hopefully I can fly a bit more and start to have some fun. Annual on the plane is due in July, I think I will do an annual in March so I don't have any interruption's flying this summer....:)
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Or, depending on your state law, bypass probate and associated taxes and designate beneficiaries or payment on death recipients on your accounts. When you die, they get the assets with the stroke of a pen. If you have cars or real property then it may get a bit more complicated depending on how it's titled.
Click to expand...

Chip Sylverne said:
Not for liquid assets, cd's or stocks and such. Real property is a different story. Payment on death means just that. The owner dies, the designee gets paid. The desinee can be a person, multiple person a trust or an estate. Biggest benefit is, no probate and no need for a will.
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This ASSUMES that the estate is small enough that state death taxes aren't involved. I am the designated Personal Representative dealing with my mom's will. Almost done (thank goodness). Fortunately her taxable estate was below the threshold in the state of Washington where the state death tax was not involved. This would have resulted in a huge delay as the state is way behind in their paperwork (as in - over a year of extra waiting). We still had to probate her estate, however. With our not having to deal with the death tax that is very simple. As the time for creditors to make themselves known has now passed it should now be a simple matter of having her assets divided according to her will and dealing with the IRS one last time. I hired her lawyer to handle all the miscellaneous nonsense for me, so one more bill from her and one from the accountant who handles her taxes and I should be able to divide her remaining checking account between my brother and me and I'll be done with this. Fortunately, she had named me as a cosigner on the checking account several years ago, so the bank has not been a problem.

The bottom line is to make sure that you deal with this according to the laws in your state. When my wife and I had our wills drawn up it really wasn't that expensive and was well worth it. Mom's is turning out the same way.
 
DIY legal documents are great...for the lawyers who get to untangle them later. Even sophisticated businesses that try to DIY their own legal docs rarely do it correctly, then end up spending a ton of legal fees later to fix an issue that probably could have been dealt with up-front for much less money. If you have meaningful assets, or children, do yourself a favor and hire an attorney to take care of it properly. A simple will shouldn't cost more than a couple thousand to have drafted by competent counsel. When you start getting into trusts and such, it'll get a little more expensive.
 
Best wishes on your retirement, Bill. Your local, friendly attorney will be just what you need to have a good will.

State laws make a big difference in what is proper in a will, and your attorney is local.

I presume that your on the job injury had some bearing on the retirement. If you are out before you desired to be, have a fine time for a year or so, then look for work that you would prefer to your old one. I returned to work after 3 years of formal retirement, and worked 5 more years, part time, call out basis, at 3 times the pre retirement hourly rate (Before benefits, the part time had no benefits). I had the option of turning down work that was a serious problem with my normal life, but responded 24/7 most of the time.

Your skills may be in demand during the tourist season, more than the winter, and you can travel south for the cold months, and return for the earnings of Alaska in the warm months.

Retirement is very much what you make of it. Simply loafing is a lousy retirement, after a few months. I continued to do some work the first two years, but it did not interfere with travel plans.
 
I tried a "do your own legal document" package (from Office Depot?) several years ago and what they produced was a disaster. After comparing it to a previous document, I realized they were just printing things out in bulk without regard to state laws and requirements. One power of attorney document had outright contradictory statements in it - "this agreement shall be durable", later "this agreement is not durable". Junk.

It shouldn't cost that much to have a will made by someone competent who cares at least a little.
 
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