Many people will consider using online documents or going to an inexpensive document preparation service that does not have attorneys on staff. Back in the early days of estate planning, when most people were husband and wife with two children, cookie-cutter estate planning documents made sense. But that is not the world we live in today. Today’s modern families, non-traditional couples, and members of the LGBTQ community require more specialized estate planning. Online documents and document preparation services cannot provide legal advice and can only provide you with cookie-cutter documents. If you have any specific needs or complicated estate planning issues, it is always better to have an attorney prepare your estate planning documents. If you use online documents or go to an inexpensive document preparation service, you or your executor/trustee should be prepared to pay a lot more in the future to have an attorney fix the problems created by cookie-cutter documents than if you had an attorney prepare them in the first place.
