Anyone using Quicken WillMaker & Trust 2020 ?

[rahaparta]

Would love to hear any pros and cons about using Quicken WillMaker & Trust 2020

[Sibley]

No, but my response is probably going to be similar to Legal Zoom or whatever. The consequences of screwing up estate planning can be bad. If you have dependents, lots of money/property, or weird circumstances, then pay the money for a real live lawyer to do it for you. You never really hear about the estates that go well, but you certainly hear about the ones that go poorly.

[Krolik]

I was considering using some of the automated services to do estate documents but listened to the advice here and went to the lawyer.
Our situation is pretty straight forward: middle aged married couple + 1 minor child.
The depth of detail and various scenarios that our lawyer covered was really vast. We paid 3K for 2 wills, Trust and guardianship documents, but I consider it money well spent. It is one time expense (in most cases).

[MissPeach]

I would recommend reading the book 'Living Trusts for Everyone' first. It's actually a pretty easy and fun read for a law book.

A huge part is you want to avoid probate. In my state I can add a beneficiary on all my assets as a renter but not as a home owner (since I'm single). That will allow them to avoid probate unless I own property. If I didn't own property and had no kids I would consider using beneficiaries as an option and a will but you need to understand how to arrange your assets to avoid probate.

A will on it's own will state your wishes but that doesn't mean your assets will avoid the long and expensive process of probate. It depends on your assets and how they are set up. The book also explains how wills are contested and how easy it is to do versus a trust.

If you have a more complicated situation, or as the book points out even an easy one, a trust is likely your best answer. It goes into why and how a lot of estate lawyers focus on wills rather than trusts and why trusts are often superior.

In my situation I had set up everything to pass without probate so I was willing to just go with a will since I was wanting a lot of the standards in my state anyway. If you're in that situation and want largely what's common in your state anyway one of the wills programs would probably work fine. But now I have assets that can't pass without going through probate I'm paying a lawyer to draft a trust and estate plan for me. That way the money will pass easily. Also if you have kids and want to make sure they don't get a windfall too young a trust is the best way to set that up.

Another plus of that book and ones like it is when I went to the lawyer I already had thought about and knew largely what I wanted. I was able to get a really good price because I had laid everything out at the consultation and was able to save a lot of hours with the lawyer.