The 2nd misconception that we see out there is that I don’t need to use an estate planning attorney. I’ll just use online forms. Well, I’ve seen some online forms work. They typically don’t and the reason why is most online forms are going to be generic for every single state. Some companies do promote the fact that their online forms are state specific, but that’s not always the case.
To give you an example of why these online forms don’t work, we had a client come in a few years ago and their will said, “I leave everything to my.” And then it just had in bold lettering, “Beneficiary.” Well, who is the beneficiary? We didn’t know and there was litigation ensued to figure out who the beneficiary was, and it’s because the individual filling out the form before they died forgot to fill in the field that says beneficiary. There is a misconception out there that you don’t need an estate planning attorney.
In some cases that’s okay. In a lot of cases these online forms or do-it-yourself estate plans cause more issues than if you didn’t have an estate plan altogether. Dare I say that I would almost rather you not have an online from estate plan and just follow default rules in Colorado versus doing it yourself and having a lot of issues on the back end. I would almost always recommend that you at least talk to an estate planning attorney.
