If you want a living trust to protect your loved ones, but hope to avoid legal fees, you have several choices: You could buy a do-it-yourself book or a computer software package, and fill in the blanks. Or, you could attend law school, study estate planning, practice for years and then, equipped with expertise and experience, draft your own living trust and appropriate related documents.
Do you fix your own plumbing? If you hang in there long enough, you might re-plumb your house without flooding the neighborhood. If you get sick, you might even want to perform surgery on yourself (but please don’t!) Would you undergo an IRS audit without an experienced tax professional?
There are many things we’re allowed to do alone, but shouldn’t try. While we might “luck out,” we’ll more probably waste time, effort, emotions and money, and make a mess.
Estate planning is too important to leave to amateurs. The worst part is, once you’ve written your own will or trust, we probably won’t know if you did it right until it’s too late to correct any mistakes or clean up any ambiguities.
Most people are unqualified to do their own living trusts and wills or to decide which form clauses might best carry out their wishes. For example, what provision should be made for distribution to contingent beneficiaries or after-born heirs? Should we use a sprinkling power or give a spouse a power of appointment? These are questions that require the personal attention of an experienced attorney, and often the input of tax, insurance and financial planning professionals.
If your mail-order shoes don’t fit, you’ve wasted a little money and maybe hurt your feet. If your low-cost living trust doesn’t fit properly, you may have wasted thousands of dollars of future legal fees, taxes and other costs, and hurt your loved ones for years to come.
A note of caution: For many years, “Trust Mills,” often operated by non-attorneys, proliferated in California. Estate-planning documents sold by them created a myriad of problems for consumers. If you or a family member have such documents, this may be an ideal time to review and revise them if necessary, to prevent serious and expensive problems when the persons for whom they were created can no longer amend them.
Jerry Kessler practices law in Santa Clarita. He may be reached at 661-255-1001.