Should you make your will using a cheap, online form?

How about you save yourself the few bucks for that online form and write out a simple will on a piece of paper. My column, published March 3, 2024, gave the minimal requirements of a valid will.

Either way, you’ll end up with a valid will. Well, only if the online form gives you the right instructions for signing and witnessing it. So, have the above mentioned column handy.

If your goal is a valid will, you’ll save yourself hundreds of dollars.

Now I’m going to upsell you with the suggestion you should shoot higher than mere validity when making your will. It’s not self-interest to your estate planning business. I don’t want it. I get more requests for estate planning consultations than I can accommodate.

I suggest a goal to achieve a desired outcome. Getting the validity checkmark is of no value if your will won’t achieve what you want it to achieve. I also suggest a goal of losing as little as possible to taxes and fees.

Do you have a spouse? If so, you probably want them to benefit from your shared wealth if you die before they do. If your desired outcome is for your spouse to have complete ownership of all of your shared wealth, an estate planning lawyer will advise you how that can be accomplished without having any will at all. That can often be achieved by ensuring you name your spouse as beneficiary of life insurance policies, RRIFs, TFSAs, etc., and your spouse is named as joint-owner/holder of your home and all other assets.

But that might not be full extent of your desired outcome. You might also want your children to end up sharing in your wealth after your spouse dies. If you have a blended family, a lawyer will alert you to the reality that after you’re dead, your spouse’s feelings about leaving part of the estate to their stepchildren might change. There are ways to address that too. I’ve written about them in previous columns. You won’t find that with a cheap, online will.

There are a number of interesting issues that come up with children which cannot be addressed with a online will. You might have a vulnerable adult child who would be incapable of handling an inheritance. Or maybe there’s a significant imbalance about how you want your estate distributed amongst your children because of different levels of need, financial help you’ve already provided to one of them, care you’re receiving from a child or relationship issues.

None of those issues can be effectively handled with a cheap, online will.

Then there are contingencies. A key function of an estate planning lawyer is they can help you identify ways your life circumstances might change over time, which would in turn change your wishes. And they can help to incorporate those contingencies into your will.

Can you simply make a new will when your circumstances change? Not if you’ve developed dementia and no longer have the cognitive capacity to do so.

I’m just scratching the surface of issues that can arise in estate planning.

There’s also the tax end of things. An estate planning lawyer will be familiar with, and alert you to, important tax implications that could dramatically impact outcomes and refer you to a trusted estate tax accountant if you need those services.

The few hundred dollars a lawyer will charge for a will, or few thousand for more complex estate planning structures, come with important legal advice and expertise that will ensure your affairs are in order.

It is possible a cheap, online will might be perfectly suitable for your particular life circumstances and an estate planning consultation would turn out to be a waste of money. But you won’t know that without having had the estate planning consultation.

Reach out to me if you have any difficulty accessing the previous columns I’ve referred to.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.