Something that we’ve seen in the last couple of months that I’d like to point out, is that we’ve had three different set of married clients come in, having had done their prior Wills using software. They all used different packages, but they used software.
While it’s tempting to do that because the price tag is pretty cheap (I think they paid like fifty or seventy-five dollars each) and it’s tempting to do it in a pinch, I would be cautious. The software doesn’t know your entire situation within the context of the estate planning landscape and it doesn’t know the practical realities of the decisions you are making.
A lot of the decisions that clients need to make, it’s hard for clients to know what the repercussions are when they are going through the workflow of the software program.
I’m not bashing software, because we actually use software to create and draft our documents. We also have over 20 years of practical experience, so we know what will happen with the different choices clients make. We can talk to clients and guide them as they make some difficult decisions and let them know things that they’re not thinking about, the practical realities of administering their Wills or dealing with their advanced directives or any of the other documents. I’m not bashing software, but I’d be wary about using it for documents like these.
