Don’t Rely on Services Like Trust & Will or LegalZoom for Your Estate Plan

You’ve probably seen ads promising an easy, low-cost way to draft your will or trust online. But here’s the thing: your family, your assets, and your goals are far too important to leave to a fill-in-the-blank template. Let’s talk about why.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Well, good afternoon, Michiganers, and welcome back to Tuesday with Tom,
Michigan's Only podcast, where we talk about estate planning, a
state settlement, and everything in between. As always, I'm your host,
Tom Doyle, a state planning attorney, lifelong Michigan resident, an
ambassador for everything good in this great state of Michigan. Welcome,

(00:57):
Welcome to today's episode. Well, just a brief cap. Brief
recap last episode More things you need to know about
a helock. Last couple episodes, I talked about possibly using
helocks as a way to lock down your title to
your home so that someone can't fraudulently transfer it, and

(01:22):
I talked about why that is the case and how
it would work. And then the last episode I gave
even some more ideas if you're going to consider a helock,
what you might be looking for and getting that. So
if that's a concern to you, I invite you listen
to the last couple episodes. Well something today. Don't rely

(01:44):
on services like Trust and Will or Legal Zoom for
your state plan But please remember what I'm about to
discuss is meant to be educational and informative. It is
not legal advice. Every person's situation is different, so be
sure to talk with your own attorney to figure out

(02:06):
what makes the most sense for you and your estate plan.
Don't rely on services like Trust and Will or Legal
Zoom for your state plan. You've probably heard the advertisements

(02:27):
or seen them on the internet. You can go to
a service like Trust and Will, which is one of
the newer ones. It's an attorney created service, or a
more one that's been around quite a bit longer. Legal Zooms. Well,
today we're going to talk about why you shouldn't rely
upon those services in creating your estate plan, and it's

(02:50):
a topic I feel very strongly about. Bottom line, having
a state plan is not simply about having a legal
document created for you, and that's all those services do.
We're going to talk in a minute about what they

(03:11):
actually do for you. But simply having a legal document
created for you is not having an estate plan. The
legal documents, in the end, are simply the tools that
are going to be used to carry out your state plan.
So it's to look at your goals, what you're trying

(03:34):
to accomplish, and then utilizing the documents that appropriately fulfill
those goals. And so if you don't know what you're doing,
and you decide to prepare the documents yourself so or
even buy them through one of these online services. What
you're not getting, even though they say created by a lawyer,

(03:56):
that's not saying the lawyer has anything to do with
your estate plan. What you're not getting with any of
those services is a knowledge and experience of an estate
planning attorney who can help you determine what documents are
appropriate for you, what you actually need, and what those

(04:20):
documents are saying. So let me just start out at
this point. Do you know what you're doing? So you
think I'm going to go online, I'm going to do
a will or a trust using one of these services,
do you know what you're doing? Well, Amanda, and I
let me give you an example. A man and I
met with some prospective clients a while back. They had

(04:41):
come to one of our seminars, they said, an appointment
after that seminar. They came in to see us and
they put on the table in front of us the
various estate planning documents that they had prepared themselves using
an online service. And when they began the conversation, they
said some thing like, well, you know, we're certain that

(05:03):
all these documents are in order, and we're really not
sure that they need to be double checked, but we
wanted to talk about making some changes. So they weren't
coming to us to ask us to review the documents
for whether or not they were correct. They were coming
to us because now they're looking at trying to make
some changes, and what they're realizing is the online service

(05:26):
that they used didn't allow for making changes to their documents.
So I started out picked up their will, and after
reading the first sentence of the will, I asked them
when they had lived in Texas, to which they replied, well,
we'd never lived in Texas, and why is it that
you're asking that question. Well, it turns out that in

(05:49):
the first sentence of the will I was reading, it
said that I, John Smith, being a resident of Texas,
do make this my last will and testament. And so
clearly knew at that point that they didn't understand what
they had even done. If they couldn't have even realized

(06:12):
that the very first sentence of the legal documents were
actually for the wrong state. Well, so Legal Zoom, Trust
and Will, two of the big players out there right now.
They make it sound very much like we're going to
provide you great legal services. You can get these documents
prepared and it's going to be matching up to the

(06:35):
information that you're providing to us. Well, let's take a
look at some of the terms and services. Now, this
is the contract mind you. For example, legal Zoom. If
you use legal Zoom, they have terms and services on
their website and this is what they're saying to you.
In part, LegalZoom dot Com provides an online legal portal

(06:59):
to give visitors a general understanding of the law and
to provide an automated software solution to individuals who choose
to prepare their own legal documents. So stop right there.
Does that say that legal zoom is providing you documents

(07:20):
that are appropriate? Does that say that legal zoom is
looking at what you're trying to accomplish, what your estate
planning goals are, and trying to create documents that match it. No,
they're simply providing an automated software solution if you choose
to prepare your own Continuing, at no time do we

(07:42):
review your answers for legal sufficiency, draw legal conclusions, provide
legal advice, opinions or recommendations about your legal rights. Remedies, defenses, options,
selections of forms or strategies, or apply the law to
the fact of your particular situation. That's essentially what lawyers

(08:06):
do when they're working with you to create your estate plan,
and legal Zoom is clearly saying they don't do it.
In fact, following up to that paragraph, legal zoom, its
services and its forms or templates are not a substitute
for the advice or services of an attorney. So, again,

(08:33):
using something like legal Zoom, they're basically saying, you know
what you're doing, you know what the documents mean, You're
able to create those documents. We're just here basically fill
in some blanks and we're going to split some documents
value out for you. So let's look at Trust and Will,
one of the newer ones that certainly markets itself, has
been created by lawyers. Again, terms of service. This is

(08:57):
the contract that you're entering into with Trust and Wills.
Part of the terms of service says, while Trust and
Will strives to ensure that it's automated services are complete,
they are intended for use as a self help form.
The materials and services are not substitutes for an advice

(09:22):
and an attorney. So if you're looking to have recommendations
made to you when you type in your information, and
you're expecting that that computer is going to spit out
documents that match your particular circumstances, what your goals are,

(09:42):
what you are trying to do, trust in Wilms is
basically saying we are not doing that. In fact, they say,
as part of our services, we offer self help fill
in the blank forms. So you're just going to fill
in the blank. Are the blanks right? Well, look at
that will that was done by the client who brought

(10:03):
it in. They filled in the blanks. I don't know
how the blanks got filled in to say that they
lived in Texas. Somehow that happened and they didn't even
recognize that had happened to them. And again, trust and Wills,
our services are not substitutes for the advice of an attorney.
And if you need legal advice for your specific matter,

(10:26):
or if your matter is too complex to be addressed
by our tools, you should consult an attorney in your area.
Let's go back. If you need legal advice for your
specific matter, well, isn't that what you want when you're
having your estate plan done? You want advice that is

(10:46):
applicable to your specific circumstances. And they go on explain
even further. They talk about they have this error checking process,
and they make it sound like, oh, we're going to
make sure that everything is correct. Well, what does the
error review? What is that? By trust and will? This

(11:11):
air review does not include any assessment of legal accuracy
or validity of the documents, compliance with current state or
federal laws, appropriateness of the documents for your service, tax implications,
are consequences or potential conflicts with other state planning documents

(11:33):
you may have. So all they are doing with their
error is a're making sure that name seem to match up.
There is nothing more involved than that. And so I
have to believe when you're looking at getting your state
planning documents prepared, you want to make sure that they
are legally accurate. You want to make sure that they

(11:54):
comply with current state laws. You want to make sure
that they're specifically appropriate for your situation, that tax and
other consequences have been considered, and make sure there isn't
a potential conflict with other estate planning documents. Now, both
of these services look at their websites. They both talk

(12:16):
about oh, we have lawyers. We have lawyers, you can
click a button, you can pay an additional money, and
we have experienced lawyers. When you really read through what
those experienced lawyers are doing, they're not designing your estate plan.
You've already designed the estate plan, You've already prepaid the documents.

(12:38):
That's all done before the lawyer gets involved at all.
And look and be considered. Look carefully, if you're going
to use one of those services, what is the lawyer
actually doing for you? Because in many cases, what you're
really doing is you're buying a prepaid legal plan. Prepaid
legal plan, Okay, I'm prepaying a lawyer for some legal

(13:00):
advice that I suggest to you is not the same
thing as a lawyer looking what you're trying to accomplish,
understanding what your circumstances are, understanding what you're trying, what
your goals are, and then actually designing documents to fit
those goals. The lawyer is not designing your legal or

(13:24):
your trust in will documents. The lawyer is not designing
your legal zoom documents. Those are all being done by
those services, not by the lawyers. So one size doesn't
fit all. Every family is unique maybe you've got a

(13:44):
blended family, or you've got children from prior marriages, or
you've got a special needs child, or you've got charitable goals,
or maybe you've got some complex business interests. Well, unless
you can design the forms yourself, an online form can't
capture those nuances. And again you're not getting personal advice

(14:09):
or guidance. There's no attorney advising you which type of
trust or whether you even need a trust. The assumption
when they indicate we are trust in wills is that
everybody should have a trust will, not everybody should have
a trust. You're looking for a lawyer to advise you

(14:30):
what your strategies should be to accomplish your goals, and
in some cases that would be having a trust. In
some cases that not trust in will or legal Zoom
is never ever going to talk about using beneficiary designations
in lieu of possibly having a trust, or using beneficiary

(14:51):
designations as part of a plan to avoid probate and
understanding what the consequences are of these various beneficiary designation
that you're using, And they're not going to talk to
you about how do you coordinate your will your trust
with your retirement accounts or with your life insurance, or
how you can minimize taxes or even avoid probate complications.

(15:17):
And let's be honest, these are the kinds of things
that can make or break your estate plan. And I
mentioned earlier. Laws change, documents get outdated, they need to
be updated. And because the laws change, because these things change,

(15:39):
none of these services will be there updating your documents
for you. So bottom line, online platforms simply are not
equipped to handle your estate planning. It might be advanced planning,

(15:59):
maybe you're going to have some advanced trust, maybe you're
going to be planning for asset protection strategies, or maybe
you've got some complex family dynamics that you need to address.
Maybe you're trying to disinherit a child a very frequent one.
These services aren't designed for that sort of planning. So

(16:23):
when you work with an experience to state planning attorney,
you get more than documents. You get education and advice
tailored to your family's needs. You get the confidence that
your plan will work when your family needs it most,

(16:44):
and you avoid costly mistakes to ensure that your wishes
are clearly understood. Ask yourself, if you prepare your own will,
and you don't do it right. What's the worst thing
that could happen. Well, you're not going to be here
to find out. If it's done wrong. It will be

(17:04):
your loved ones who will be affected by an improperly,
poorly drafted document, Isn't that really? The reason to have
the estate plan is so that you have the peace
of mind from knowing that your loved ones will be
protected after your death. So, while I appreciate that having

(17:31):
an estate plan prepared costs money, the point of hiring
an estate planning attorney is so that the attorney's knowledge
and experience can be used to prevent additional grief and
heartache to your family after you have died. And your family,

(17:53):
I submit to you and your legacy deserves more than
one size fits all temp plate. Now, if you used
an online service in the past, I'm not judging you
for that, but certainly if you have, you need to
make sure that you've had it reviewed by an estate

(18:15):
planning attorney so you can be sure that it does
do exactly what you're trying to do with your estate plan.

(18:46):
Of course, amand and I would be truly honored to
help you protect the people you love. Whether that means
creating a brand new estate plan or updating an existing one,
or guiding you through the estate planning settlement process during
a full time And let me just mention this, because
the number of clients are going to walk into the office,

(19:07):
they're going to PLoP down the documents that they got
on legal Zoom, and they're going to say something like, oh,
you know, I understand it should only take about one
hundred dollars worth of your time to review these documents. Well,
that's not the way it works, not with our office.
If you're going to bring in documents that we're created
someplace else, we need to read each and every word

(19:32):
and every paragraph and every comma and every colon in
those documents to make sure that we understand them and
to make sure that we can adequately advise you on
what those documents mean. So it's not as simple you're

(19:53):
just going to drop these things off and for one
hundred bucks, somebody's going to review it, certainly not in
our office. So if that's what you're really looking for,
don't waste your time coming to us, because that's not
how we're going to handle it. In the end, it
can well be just as costly to have us review
your disting documents as it would have been to have

(20:15):
us prepared documents in the beginning for you. So just
simply keep that in mind. When you're looking at attorneys
and an attorney says to you, Hey, for a quick
fifty bucks one hundred bucks, I'll review your documents, be
careful of what are they actually doing. Are they really
reading every word? Are they taking the time to understand

(20:36):
every paragraph or they just kind of skimming through it
and going to give you an off the cuff remark
on what they think. Now, if you want to meet
with us, we make it easy and convenient to get started.
We offer in person consultations both in our Grand Rapids
and our Lancing locations. We also offer virtual consolesations either

(21:01):
through zoom or phone wherever you happen to be in Michigan.
And we have available our legal Store that if you're
just looking for one document, you can browse through our
legal store and order individual documents twenty four to seven.

(21:21):
All of that information on how to schedule appointments or
the legal store is all available at our website, DOYLELAWPC
dot com. So go to DOYLELAWPC dot com learn more
and schedule your consultation today. Well, I think that that's

(21:55):
going to be a wrap for today's show. But as always,
if you have a comment, a question you'd like to
have answered, or topic you'd like me to cover in
a future episode, head over to Tuesday with Tom dot com.
That's the website for this podcast, and there you can
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(22:16):
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(22:36):
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(22:58):
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(23:24):
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(23:44):
ask your smart speaker to play Tuesday with Tom. Well,
thanks again for spending some of your day with us,
and as always, I hope that you have an awesome
day and an awesome week here in Michigan. Stay safe.

(24:08):
Tuesday with Tom has been brought to you by the
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