From initial consultation to the final product, what is the average cost associated with having a will prepared?

If you are going with an atty and getting all the durables (which you should), then you are looking at 1200-2k per couple. Most board certified estate attys run closer to the 2k.

Anywhere from $500 to $5,000 depending on how complicated things are, who's doing the will, etc.

Several variables.




Oh, and I'm not an attorney....

Go cheap and you (or those surviving you) will have to pay later. Do it right, pay now, and the lawyer or firm you set it up with will take care of the probate & other things after you're gone.

You want to make it as painless as possible for your survivors. This means spending money now to get it right. Also, look at it & update it every 10 years or so if needed.


/2¢

Friend did this all on legal zoom, also a living trust and defined power of attorney and everything. Was very cheap.

This warning is coming from attys, so bear that in mind, but I have heard of horror stories of internet made wills - TX courts need certain language to pass and most attys out of state or ones in state that don't have will writing knowledge mess things up.

No experience with Legal Zoom, but their website says wills specific to your state. Don't you think they understand Texas requirements?

Maybe other online wills are problematic.

See 2001%r's post below.

This is very much worth spending money on. Don't try to go cheap on your will. Establish a relationship with the lawyer who will take care of things for the family after you're gone.

If you're young with no assets & no family, I guess Legal Zoom would be ok.

[This message has been edited by techno-ag (edited 4/3/2014 12:57p).]

Just helped MIL complete a very simple will, living will, poa, etc. on LZ, specific for Texas. For a sanity check, I had an attorney buddy quickly look over it, and he said it was sufficient. Hers was pretty simple (single, adult kids, very little assets). The main purpose was to get her wishes down on paper in a legal form... think the big online shops have that covered.

My will / trust docs were done by at attorney. Biggest reason for using an attorney in my case was due to having young children in the picture and also some extended family that I would not consider trustworthy... Reading the document is painful.

If your estate/estate plan is small and simple enough that Legal Zoom might work, your cost to use an attorney would be pretty low ($500-$1,000). Not sure what LegalZoom charges, but to me it'd be worth a few hundred dollars to do things right. (But I'm an attorney.) And if the above price range scares you off, why are you bothering with a will? You don't have any money to pass on to your family anyway.

I once watched a documentary where a fairly rich guy made an amendment to his will on a tavern napkin as he was going to leave $100K to that bar and its patrons. A postal worker verified that it was sound, so I think that shows not much actually has to be done.


Unfortunately, like a lot of ill planned wills, it caused a lot of division among people who were generally friends, and the bar owner ended up burning the napkin/will amendment because he would rather have a bar where everybody knows your name.

If I don't survive my future spouse, I hope none of my assets even have to go through probate in the first place. It'd be a lot easier and cheaper for me to just name her beneficiary on all my retirement accounts and bank accounts and own all real estate jointly. Even if I did get divorced or I survived my spouse, I might prefer setting up a living trust and naming my kids as beneficiaries in order to avoid the probate process.

Even if I had no trouble affording $2k for will preparation and another $2k for the probate process, why should I do all of that if I didn't have to? Of course, I may not have a surviving spouse at the time of my death, who knows, but it seems like I could easily get by with an $80 legalzoom will for now, and then pay for a lawyer to amend it or write a new one if circumstances changed.

Any lawyers care to tell me what I'm missing?

[This message has been edited by AggieMavsfan (edited 4/2/2014 4:04p).]

Did an online one and had it reviewed by an attorney friend, he made a couple changes...pro bono...whoooo

I'm an estate planning attorney and offer basic estate plans for as low as $500/person, including powers of attorney. Obviously more complex planning needs may merit more service and thus a higher fee.

There's a lot I can say about DIY wills, but here are just a few notes:
- They are only document preparation services. They do not provide legal advice.
- It's easy enough to review within the 4 corners of a document and say "this looks correct." But what about the questions the form didn't ask that might be relevant to your situation?
- The form hears what you say, not necessarily what you mean. For example, I had a client come in and say she wanted to split her estate in varying percentages between 10 different people. A doc prep service would have prepared it that way, and it would be legally valid but very difficult to administer. I understood what she meant-that she wanted to leave small gifts to one class of people and split the remainder among a handful of people- and I created a plan that does so in a way that will be much easier to administer.
- I've seen one cheaply done will which didn't include the self-attestation provisions. This means the will wasn't self-proving and the witnesses would have to be located to come to the hearing. Issues like this don't invalidate the will but do increase the difficulty and cost of probating it.
- A DIY will probably won't be invalid, but it may well make probate harder on your family and at worst it may frustrate your intentions. The cost of dealing with errors is almost certainly more than the cost of doing it right in the first place. I analogize it to pulling my own tooth when my mouth hurts. First, I'm assuming pulling my tooth is the best option; maybe a dentist would have done something else. Second, while I can probably google how to do it, I won't do as good a job as someone who does it for a living and it'll probably hurt a lot more. Third, if complications arise I'll be back at the dentist later anyway but now it's to fix a bigger problem than I started with.

I saw a comment about wanting to avoid the probate process. Honestly, Texas' probate process is so easy if you do everything right that for most Texans probate isn't something to be feared. Living trusts have their place but they've got their downsides; absent special circumstances I think most people are better served with a will. Actually, even if you have a living trust you want a pour over will anyway to scoop up any assets you failed to fund into the trust.

If anyone is interested in discussing more, feel free to email me at ellen the aggie at hotmail. I'd be happy to point you toward some good resources and/or discuss preparing a plan.

I hand wrote mine. Free.

You can generally get an attorney to do a basic one for $500-700. I just had an Aggie attorney do wills for my wife and I with advanced estate planning. I have people in my wife's family I wanted to ensure would never touch a penny that I earned, and I wanted to protect my daughter. Cost $1500 for the whole thing. She did a great job and her husband lurks on TexAgs.

Bocephus, Would you mind emailing me your friends contact info? Email is in profile. if not, no worries.

My wife and I just had wills, POA, medical permissions, etc. done for a little over $4,000. Ours were somewhat complex as they provide for a marital trust to be setup for the surviving spouse and bypass trusts to be setup for each kid to lessen the tax burden on our kid(s).

[This message has been edited by TxAg20 (edited 4/3/2014 10:24a).]

quote:

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Bocephus, Would you mind emailing me your friends contact info? Email is in profile. if not, no worries.

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Email sent

Any recs for such an attorney in the Austin area?

Spicewood....in the process of getting a living trust right now, send me an email and I will forward you the contact info to the guy I used (much cheaper than most big firms).

Matt@dimitexas.com

Got it (suggest you remove your email from post above).

Anybody recommend a houston area lawyer? Been meaning to get on this.

Look Here

I'm in Dallas but happy to work remotely with anyone who'd like to. I've got some Austin clients right now and we work mainly through email.

You have contact details so I can drop you a note?

Ellen the Aggie (no spaces) at hot mail. I'll reply back from my work one.

You can hand write your will on a single piece of paper and it is legal and enforceable. Lawyers specialize in making wills and trust overly complicated.

My dearly departed Dad spent tens of thousands having trust and wills and codicils established and it was an expensive nightmare and mess to settle the estate. Every single lawyer we talked to had a completely separate interpretation of the trusts & wills and the procedures that needed to happen. In the end it cost the estate an additional 200K in legal fees. Most estate and tax lawyers are BSing clients, they nor anyone else have a clue what other lawyers, the courts or the IRS will ultimately decide, no matter how much work they do in advance, get 10 years down the road and virtually every aspect is likely to have a different meaning or impact than intended or sold to the client as. IMHO KISS is the appropriate philosophy for wills & trust and for the vast majority of families doing it yourself or for under $500 with a little help is all that is needed.

Rant Over/

It's not just wills, it seems like a lot of legal concepts (not all!) aren't that complicated to someone with a college education, except that all the legal jargon used obfuscates the concept enough that the layperson has no choice but to pay for professional help.