Why You Need a Lawyer When Preparing Your Will & Other Estate Planning Documents

There is no more important set of documents than your Last Will and Testament, Living Will, Advanced Healthcare Directive and Power of Attorney, which assure that your wishes are honored if you become ill and when you die. A qualified lawyer, familiar with the issues and nuances of estate planning can perform those services, focusing on your needs, while an online service will merely robotically prepare documents that they emphasize are not legal advice and not protected by any attorney-client confidentiality.

In the latest edition of The Legal Tech Podcast, Attorney Daniel J. Siegel, of the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel, LLC, an experienced estate planning lawyer in Havertown, Pennsylvania, explains the importance of meeting with and working with an attorney who will analyze your specific needs and address concerns, including many that arise with non-traditional families.

Listen as Dan outlines his experience, along with his firm's unique “Pay Once, Revise for Life Estate Planning Program” that assures you only pay one time for drafting estate documents, and that all revisions are free.

Transcript

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Hello. Welcome to the latest edition of the Legal Tech Podcast. I'm attorney Dan Siegel, and I'm here to talk to you today about why you need a lawyer to draft your will and other estate planning documents. I am the principal of the law offices of Daniel J. Siegel LLC in Havertown, suburban Philadelphia. And I'm also the President of Integrated Technology Services, LLC, both of which sponsor the Legal Tech Podcast. We hope if you enjoy this, you'll share this podcast with your friends and tell them to listen as well. We're here today to talk about Wills and estate planning, but more importantly, why you need a lawyer. I have often heard people say I can just go online and get a will and not pay a lot of money for it. Why do I need a lawyer? Well, that's true. If you have something so simple where there are no questions, no issues, et cetera, how often does that come up? In my experience of over 35 years drafting these documents, almost never. A lawyer who does and prepares your documents doesn't just fill out a form and fill in the blanks. The lawyer helps you analyze your situations and explains and helps guide you to a set of documents that really can make sure that your wishes are honored both before and after you're passing and to make life easier for those who have to address both pre and post death issues. So we're going to talk about that today. I also want to mention that my office, if you do come to us for those types of documents, we charge a one time fee and we never charge for revisions because I believe that once you've paid us, that's sufficient. But let's talk about the clients. These clients, husband and wife with no children, came today to discuss their estate planning needs. They also brought along their prior documents, which were drafted about 15 years ago. Well, the first thing that was clear is that I knew that the law had changed. And so the powers of attorney that they brought with, while technically still enforceable, we're lacking many of the items that are needed. And a power of attorney is a crucial document in many cases, as important or more important than a will because the power of attorney determines who will handle your affairs in the event you are unable to do so because of a physical or mental incapacity. And unfortunately for many people, that happens all too often, and it is very common, and it may not even be before death. If you have major surgery, you may need to have a power of attorney. And we had to sit and the interview, which took about an hour, addressed a lot of issues. And I'm going to go through those issues generally. So you understand the problem. But the reality is that they could have and I've had clients ask me, well, why don't I just go online to one of those sites that says they'll help me draft my last will and testament, and they'll do it for a flat fee of maybe $89 or something like that? Well, there are lots of reasons not to use those types of services. The first is that a good attorney should first interview you. We have a detailed form that we send to clients so that when they come, we are prepared, having analyzed that information, to see what their needs are, not the needs of the generic person, but the needs of those individuals who came to our office. We have general ways. We draft documents, but every document is drafted for the specific needs of a client. And clients who come to attorneys have protections. You're protected by the attorney client privilege, which means that information that you convey to your attorney is confidential. You also have protections that if there is a mistake made, attorneys in Pennsylvania, for example, where we practice, have to disclose if they don't have malpractice insurance. Of course we do. But I went to one of these online sites that drafts your will for you, and it talks about how people trust us and is exactly what you need, et cetera, et cetera. But did you read the fine print that communications between you and the site are protected by the site's Privacy policy, but you're not protected by the attorney client privilege or as work product, which is the doctrine that your information that you convey to your attorney is confidential. The site also says, we are not a law firm or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. We cannot provide any kind of advice, explanation, opinion or recommendation about possible legal rights, remedies, defenses, options, selection of forms or strategies. Well, isn't drafting a will providing legal advice and an opinion or recommendation? And of course, if you try to read their Privacy policy, which goes on and on and on, you'll see that they use cookies, they share your information, they use Google Analytics, they use lots of different things. And there's no confidentiality like there is with a lawyer. But let's talk about real life situations so you can understand why it's important to meet with an attorney to go over your needs. The first thing we did was look at the client's previous documents. So they brought in their Wills, they brought in their powers of attorney, and we looked at the documents. Well, things had happened since their last drafted their Wills, and they had written all over the Wills to indicate this person had passed away, et cetera. Well, writing on an original will and crossing things out can be deemed to invalidate a will. And if you die without a will, while in many cases, the States, the laws that apply, called the laws of intestinal, may meet your needs, when you have a will, you determine exactly what happens to what you have at the moment you pass. Who gets what? Who is the person or persons who will be in charge of administering, doing the paperwork, filing the inheritance tax return, meeting with you and the register of Wills. Meeting with the register of Wills and your heir. Those are the things that an attorney drafting a will thinks about. And we think about things like alternates because these clients came in and they just decided that their decision would be that everything goes to each other and then to other people, since they didn't have children, but they only listed each other as the executor, the person who administers their estate. But what happens if both are killed, God forbid, in the same car accident? That's a real problem. If you have no one else listed, you have no children, you're at the mercy of a court. So we first examined what their needs were because they did want to do, as many families and couples do, give everything to each other. But then once one of them passes, then the other has to determine what happens to his or her estate when he or she passes. And that raises questions. It raises questions as to who gets what, how much each person gets. And when you're giving money to people, children, relatives, whomever you also have to decide what happens. Let's say you want to give it to your nephew John. Well, John is married to Mary and has three children. And you want to divide your estate between your nephew John and your cousin Bill. Well, if something happens to John, what do you do? Do you want their John's portion of your estate to go to his children or do you want to go to Bill? These are the types of questions, and they are important because they affect how we draft the document. We look at all of those things. We get the information about who their siblings are, who their relatives are, in case we need to contact them, even if they are not going to benefit from being in the will and receiving a portion of their estate. So we're looking at all of these types of questions. If there are children, as there could be in the circumstances that our clients had today, where if an heir passes, that heir's share goes to that heirs children. Well, then you have to ascertain who would be the Guardian of the money that those children receive? Because children, anyone under age 18 cannot receive those funds directly, and they have to be managed by someone. And then there are the circumstances under which that is managed. Do they get the money at age 18? Do you give some when they're in College? Do you wait till they're 25? These are a variety of the questions that we ask each and every client when we're dealing with powers of attorney. The first question that we always ask is, is this a power that goes into effect now, which means that the person you've given the power to that's called your attorney. Is that person able to exercise his or her authority now? Or does the power of attorney only go into effect when you become unable to handle your affairs because of a physical or mental incapacity? When we're dealing with healthcare directives, those designate an individual to make healthcare decisions. You also have to consider whether you need a HIPAA or other form to assure that the people who make your medical decisions. And it may be when you are in an incapacitated state with no likelihood of survival. Or it could be that you have major surgery and you're unable to handle your affairs because of the consequences of that surgery or that condition. These are the things that a lawyer thinks about. That a bot on a website that does question and answer. And if you say this, it does this that those bots aren't thinking about, they're there to consider the generic circumstances. And then we have circumstances not present in the clients today, but happen often with nontraditional families where you have couples who aren't related or partners where they have never been married. Or you have someone who is single. And you have to determine things like who's going to have access to your remains. Because if you're a single person and you haven't designated it, who should have access to your remains? Suppose you're in a relationship, but you're not married. Your partner isn't a relative. Will the hospital allow you in to visit your partner when he or she is sick? Those require forms in Pennsylvania for hospital visitation, for disposition of remains. They require an analysis that goes beyond please fill in your name, fill in your address, your date of birth, et cetera. Those are the basics. Yes, we obtain all of that information, but we go further. We try to make sure that we understand our clients, that we direct them to the proper solutions for their concerns. That's what lawyers do. We didn't go to law school just to learn how to fill in the blanks. That's easy. And in certain cases, that may be appropriate. But not when you're dealing with your last will and testament. That determines what happens when you pass. That determines circumstances, including payment of inheritance tax and ways to address those situations. So think about it before you decide to save a few pennies. Consider that making your estate planning documents, drafting your will, drafting a power of attorney, looking at and drafting health care directives, drafting living Wills and those types of documents are crucial to assure that your heirs and your loved ones are able to deal with major situations in the event of your illness or your demise. You need a lawyer to do that. A good lawyer can help you direct you. And the cost of a lawyer often not a lot of money is far more important in the long run than saving a few pennies by filling out a form online with a company whose Privacy policy is thousands of words and has lots of information and will sell your information to whomever they want because they're there not to protect your interests, but to make a profit and to be an internet site. I am attorney Dan Siegel I am the principal of the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel LLC in Havertown, Pennsylvania and on behalf of the Law Offices of Daniel J. Siegel and Integrated Technology Services, LLC the Sponsors of today's podcast I want to thank you for listening and wish you a good day. Thank you. Bye.