A quick Internet search about estate planning will yield many results promising to guide you along the way as you develop your own legal paperwork. Creating your own estate plan might seem like a good idea, too. After all, it may seem like tackling this issue on your own will save you time and money. But the truth is that creating a DIY estate plan is risky and could lead to an outcome that you’d otherwise want to avoid.
What’s at risk with a DIY estate plan?
There’s a lot that can go wrong when you create your own estate plan. This includes:
- Utilizing boilerplate language that’s later invalidated or that provides no real value to your estate plan.
- Relying on only the most straightforward estate planning options, thus cutting you off from planning strategies that could be more beneficial for you, your estate and your loved ones.
- Lacking accountability since you’ll have no one to blame but yourself if something goes wrong with estate planning.
- Costing more money if your estate plan ends up being challenged because your terms are poorly written or otherwise subject to interpretation.
- Overlooking some of the intricacies of your family dynamics that could play an important role in how you should develop your estate plan.
- Misinterpreting how taxation may apply to your estate.
These are just some of the many bad outcomes that you could experience by relying on internet resources to create your estate plan. So, be careful when you decide where to find the help you need.
If you want to learn more about the estate planning process and how you can navigate it to your advantage, then now is the time to seek out any guidance you may need. This could be from an experienced estate planning attorney. Regardless, you need to make sure that you’re fully informed so that you can make the decisions that are right for you and your vision of the future of your estate.
