We did all this last year through our credit union, and it was about the same price. We did wills, power of attorney and medical power of attorney (which is a health care directive). We opted not to put money into a trust. Our wills are written in such a way that we don't have to re-do them ... ever. We probably will add a -- is codicil the right word? -- when we have grandchildren because we would name them specifically and give them a portion of our estate, but the documents even specify who gets our money if we AND our children should all die together.
Here's how it worked for us:
- We met with a credit union employee who "walked us through" quite a few questions concerning our estate -- some questions we hadn't yet considered, and some we couldn't answer. This gave us a chance to go home and talk through our options.
- A month later we met with the attorney, who wrote up the official documents and then filed them on our behalf. He gave us advice on various details -- some of which we accepted, some of which we didn't, but he discussed the pros and cons of each choice with us.
What we didn't get by using the credit union /the low price was speed. When I made the appointment to speak to the first man, we had to wait something like 3 weeks, and then it was several months before the attorney made it to our county. We didn't actually think this was a bad thing: As I said, the first interview brought up a number of questions, which we could not answer ... and we were glad to have time in which to reflect and discuss. But someone else in different circumstances might want to hurry the process along, and we couldn't do that for the budget price.
After writing these documents, we then put together a notebook to our adult children, which tells them how to access our will and "walks them through" what we'd want them to do: Funeral wishes, etc. We included copies of our birth certificates, our last two tax returns, maps of our properties, a list of the bills we pay, a list of our investments and account #s -- and probably other things too; we put real effort into this -- so they'll be able to finish out our final estate with minimal trouble. We decided we'll update these documents every year when we do our tax returns. At some point we'll add sons-in-law and grandchildren to our letter.
Depending upon your children's ages, you might need more. If your children are young, you absolutely should spell out who would care for them if you were both to die. This is probably more important than anything else.