When you begin considering making a will, you may consider a number of different ways to go about it. Some people choose to simply make wills on their own, many of which meet the requirements needed to hold up in court. However, involving an attorney has a number of benefits you may have yet to consider.
A will can only provide guidance in the areas where you make your wishes known. The reasons you have for creating a will may be perfectly good reasons, but they may also completely ignore areas of interest that you simply don’t know about. Enlisting help from an attorney ensures that you’ll have professional guidance through all of the areas where a will is generally useful, including issues you might otherwise miss entirely.
At the same time, an attorney provides you with a line of protection against a number of threats to your will. On a very practical level, an attorney who guides you through will creation will keep copies of the original will and related documents, which is a useful redundancy protection from losing the originals in a fire or a move, for instance. On a greater scale, if some party or another chooses to contest the will, the attorney is already poised to protect your wishes further.
If you believe that you can benefit from an attorney’s guidance through will creation or estate planning issues, don’t hesitate to schedule a free consultation with a practice. Professional estate planning guidance can help you understand the complete scope of benefits and protections a will can provide, and will walk with you through the entire process.
Source: Lake County Record-Bee, “Importance of original estate planning documents,” Dennis Fordham, Oct. 18, 2017