Do DIY Estate Planning Kits Work?

The do-it-yourself craze has really taken off in the United States, and there are a number of reasons for this. There's always going to be an economic motivation involved in doing something for yourself, and the state of the economy over the last couple of years certainly got more people thinking along these lines. Also, when you're a homeowner it can be fun to look around and see how you might be able to invest some "sweat equity" into improving your home in an effort to increase its value and simply ratchet up your day-to-day quality of life.

Rolling up your sleeves and adopting the DIY mentality has its place, but you have to know where the boundaries are so you don't wind up doing yourself more harm than good.

With this in mind, another one of the reasons why people are engaging in more and more do-it-yourself endeavors is because of the easily accessible information they can find on the Internet. So of course you will find no shortage of estate planning kits, will construction templates, and one-size-fits-all estate planning solutions on the web.

Do DIY estate planning kits really work? One would assume they probably do provide you with the opportunity to fill in some blanks and generate some type of generic document. But the fact is that estate planning is a multifaceted endeavor that is unique to each individual, and there are many different financial instruments that can be implemented based on the specifics of your case.

Knowing which ones to use and then executing them properly with regard to the jurisdiction within which you are residing is a somewhat intricate legal matter that would be difficult to impossible to address in any one handy-dandy "kit."

This is a matter of common sense for the most part, but people can sometimes be enticed by a convincing web page that does a good job of oversimplifying the process. You get what you pay for, and expert legal representation is not free. But it is fair to suggest that you will get much more value for your dollar with an estate planning attorney than you will with a risky, amateur do-it-yourself estate planning kit.

Alan L. Augulis is a leading provider of expert estate planning guidance in Warren, NJ. For more information on estate planning and other estate planning services, visit our website.