What You Miss Out on with a DIY Will?
By Barry Zimmer on November 8th, 2016 in Wills & Trusts
If you make a DIY will, you could end up missing out on important advice that you need to help you protect your legacy and secure your future. An experienced estate planning attorney can provide assistance with making a will and with taking other steps to achieve your estate planning goals. An attorney can also review your will to help ensure that it is legally valid and enforceable so you do not jeopardize your ability to determine what will happen to your wealth when you are gone.
Zimmer Law Firm makes the estate planning process easy. We can provide affordable help with making a last will and testament and can also offer you advice that you could not get if you tried to make a will on your own. Working with an experienced attorney is a much better choice when your legacy and family security is at stake, so skip the DIY will and give us a call to get proper help.
What Do You Miss With a DIY Will?
When you make a DIY will, you miss out on getting proper legal advice and you miss out on finding out about asset protection and legacy planning tips that you could use. Making a will on your own means that you will not get:
- A lawyer to review your will and make sure it is legally valid. If you fail to follow Ohio laws for making a legally valid will, the will that you create may not actually be upheld and probated. This would mean Ohio intestacy law would apply to determine what happens to your property, instead of your wishes being respected.
- Advice about estate tax. If your estate is large enough, you could end up losing a significant portion of the value of your wealth to federal taxes. This is an especially big issue if you own a farm or business, as there may not be enough liquid assets to pay for the taxes triggered by the value of your company or land. Your heirs could have to sell property or business assets just to pay the IRS.
- Advice about other estate planning tools. There are different tools besides a last will and testament which you may want to incorporate into your estate plan. For example, you may want to create a trust to provide for minor children, to protect assets in case of incapacity, to avoid estate taxes, and to accomplish a host of other goals. You won’t find out about all of these other tools if you just make a DIY will and assume it will be enough.
- Advice about reducing the chances of a contested will. If you make a will on your own and it is contested, then there may be a greater chance that the will is found invalid. If you had a lawyer, your attorney can help you to incorporate a no contest clause and can assist you in taking other steps to show you are not acting under duress and are of sound mind at the time the will is created.
- The opportunity to make end of life plans. A will just protects you after your death. It doesn’t keep your assets safe if you need to go into a nursing home, and it does not address what happens if you are incapacitated by an illness or an injury. It also does not give you the chance to make advanced choices on medical care you may, or may not, wish to receive at the end of your life. When you work with an attorney, your lawyer can help you to take advantage of things like living wills and can assist with the creation of an incapacity plan so you can ensure you have control if something happens to you.
These are just a few of many examples of things you will miss if you make a DIY will. Don’t lose out on the chance to make an estate planning that actually works for you- get the right help from an experienced attorney.
Getting Help from An Ohio Wills and Trusts Lawyer
Zimmer Law Firm is here to help you make a comprehensive estate plan that includes a legally enforceable will and that includes other essential estate planning tools. To find out more about what should be a part of your plan and why a DIY will is not enough, you can download our estate planning checklist. You can also give us a call at 513.721.1513 for personalized advice and to begin your estate planning process with help from a lawyer who can make Ohio laws work for you.