Why Online Estate Plans Are a Bad Idea
As someone who spends a lot of time online, and someone who also looks into different options available for estate plans, I frequently see “do-it-yourself” estate plan packages. The new hot thing, in 2025, is AI-assisted estate plan drafting. These are usually offered at very attractive prices, with easy-to-use software, customizable packages, and guarantees. Why pay an attorney thousands of dollars when you could have software generate “the same documents” for a few hundred?
Never, ever buy one of these.
There are several reasons why. First, having an actual human attorney on and at your side can help ensure that your assets are actually protected and that your wishes are actually followed. Being promised an “attorney-quality document” is not the same thing as having a usable document. Not only do estate plan documents differ pretty significantly in all 50 states, but even slight variations from what is legally acceptable can cause you major issues.
The value added by a competent estate planning attorney is not primarily in the documents themselves; we attorneys’ primary goal in estate planning is to properly advise our clients in which documents are needed, how to use them, when to change them, and how to ensure your assets are protected.
This last point raises the most important reason to not use DIY trust software: trusts are meaningless if they are not properly funded. Say you have a home worth one million dollars. You can intend to put this home in a trust to avoid putting it through probate. But unless you have an attorney helping you through this process, it is highly likely that you will do it incorrectly.
A horror story: a former client came to me and asked for a stand-alone trust. They said that they had taken care of all of their other estate plan documents, including a will, durable power of attorney, advance healthcare directive, and others. I tried to convince them that an estate plan is much more likely to fail unless it’s all created together, but they refused to have me draft anything other than a trust. They recently passed away. The person they had appointed as their trustee came to me, mourning, lost, and confused. Well, it turns out that the client had used the estate plan documents from a certain CNBC correspondent. Not only are they largely deficient here in California, but they created a major inconsistency with the trust that I created, leaving nearly all of their assets unprotected and going to people they didn’t necessarily want them going to. Their loved ones are now going to have to spend tens of thousand dollars, at minimum, to handle these inconsistencies.
Sure, you might save a couple thousand dollars in the near-term, but at what cost? The primary purpose of estate plans isn’t really to protect you, it’s to protect your loved ones after your death and to make sure that your hard-earned assets aren’t being paid out to attorneys, the IRS, the courts, and family members who you don’t like. Having an attorney on your side now and in the future, someone to grow alongside you, is the best way to protect yourself and your loved ones.
Alexis B. Levy offers all-inclusive, flat-fee estate planning services, including for revocable living trusts, last wills and testaments, durable powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, and more. Please check out our package options and prices.