QUESTION

Need to update My and wife's wills

Asked on Mar 14th, 2016 on Wills and Probate - Georgia
More details to this question:
My Wife and I have simple wills that were made 20 years ago. We need to update them, now that our only child is grown. Any retirement funds, banks funds, life insurance already lists her as a beneficiary. Can we do a new will using a service such as Dave Ramsey, or Legal Zoom?
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1 ANSWER

Wills Attorney serving Alpharetta, GA
4 Awards
You can, in the sense that you are legally free to do so, but I don't recommend doing so. Online or other software-based Will preparation services don't tend to deal with the differences from state to state very well, especially for Georgia, which has a number of things that are very different from most other states. In addition, ensuring that the Will is witnessed correctly can be difficult. Finally, a good estate planning attorney can help you spot issues that you won't generally think of on your own, and can tell you about planning options that you may like, but that you likely otherwise won't know are even available. These options can provide great levels of creditor and predator protection for your loved ones. I have seen self-help Wills that were better than nothing, I have seen self-help Wills that we pretty bad and may have even been worse than nothing, and I have seen attempts at self-help Wills that failed completely and weren't even actually Wills at all. If you do your own Wills, without the help of an attorney, you won't know what kind you have, and you may not find out if your Wills are worse than nothing or actually invalid until it is too late to fix the problem.  
Answered on Mar 15th, 2016 at 5:41 AM

This answer is being provided as general information and not as legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by this answer.

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