The primary difference between having an attorney that helps you draft your documents and going to a website that sort of walks you through a template is when you are not the person who set up the template you don’t necessarily know what questions to ask. You may not even know what answers to give in response to those questions.
And so, there are invariably going to be things in an actual tailored estate plan that will not be part of the standard cookie cooker template process.
The other thing is—and I run into this a fair amount with folks—who, even though perhaps the website tells them how to enter their information, they don’t do it correctly, they follow the specific requirements of having witnesses and making sure that before documents are executed that they actually accomplish what you want them to accomplish and they’re going to be enforceable if they ever go to court.
So we’ve seen situations where folks have cut corners, not used witnesses, not being able to verify, you know, that folks have mental capacity to be able to sign estate planning documents. In those situations, without an attorney to advise them they’ve really thrown good money after bad.