Keep it Legal

“I wrote a will, and no one is going to fight, so no one will have to go to court.”

Wrong. All wills must go to court even if no one is fighting. All wills must go through probate. Probate is a Latin word that simply means to “prove.” The law requires that we prove that it’s truly your last will and testament. We also must prove that the executor that you named in your will is the person who shows up in court. We even must prove that the executor that you named follows the law and follows your last wishes. It’s basically been this way since 16th Century England and hasn’t changed much.

Some people leave handwritten “holographic” wills with their wishes. Some people download free templates from the internet or pay $100 for some other type of online “do it yourself” service. While you’d like to think that these documents “are better than nothing”, that’s not always true. In my experience with probating wills in court, sometimes wills that are not done by an experienced estate planning attorney can be more disastrous than if there had been no will at all.

While it’s not hard to create a legally valid will, it takes an attorney with signifi cant probate experience to ensure that your will is written in a way that can avoid common problems and complications. Avoiding common problems and complications can sometimes mean the difference between the probate process taking a few months and a few thousand dollars and the probate process taking years and tens of thousands of dollars.

In the same way that you should go see a doctor occasionally, for a checkup, you should bring your estate planning documents to a lawyer for a checkup. There might have been changes in your situation or changes in the law that might have a drastic impact on your family’s legacy.