I’m embarrassed to say this but we don’t have wills.  Gulp.  I know, it’s bad.  There are no excuses other than laziness, and a little bit of cheapness.  We have talked about getting them about a dozen times.  I even ordered Suze Orman’s will making program.  And we started it.  But we got confused, had some questions, and just basically didn’t feel confident about the whole thing.  I’m sure it’s a great program, I don’t doubt that, and you really can’t beat the price.  But we needed to do some more research and we just kinda stopped. I guess I need more hand holding.

I contacted a local lawyer to get prices for him to do it.  Start to finish, signed, sealed, delivered, would cost $1,200.  Really, based on other research that seems like a very fair price.  But still… $1,200 is still a lot of money.  Which is another stumbling block.

So then last night I saw a commercial for LegalZoom.com. Has anyone ever used them?  Their website says they will create a will and trust for $250, and that they have unlimited customer support.  I don’t really know what that means, unlimited customer support.  Can they answer legal questions?  I doubt it.  Otherwise it would say something like “lawyers to answer your questions”.

I searched around to see what others were saying about Legal Zoom.  I found this guy’s blog, and everyone who left a comment had terrible things to say.  But those were the only bad things I could find.  I found plenty of sites saying it was a good site.

Then I found this article from USA Today.  It gives reviews of a couple of different computer programs that make wills.  I might have to check those our more throughly when I have a minute.

Being a blended family really confuses things.  If my husband and I were to die at the same time, is there a place in the will where I can state I want my kids to go to two different people?  My daughter would go live with her dad, and my son would go live with my husband’s relatives.  The Suze Orman will doesn’t have a place to specify this, at least not that I could see.  So we just had them both going to my husband’s family and then made sure everyone knew our wishes.  But still… would have been nice to just have that stated right in the will.  There is all kinds of stuff like that.  It’s not a simple, split everything evenly.   My husband has his beneficiaries listed as me, and then if I’m dead, our son.  Not our daughter.  I have mine listed as my husband, then an even split between the kids.  I think that is fair since my daughter would still have a parent if me and my husband were to both die.  My son would not.  But what if I die first?  My husband would get everything, then if he died before he had a chance to change his beneficiaries my son would get everything, and my daughter would get nothing.  Obviously not what I want.   So how do we work that so that it’s fair in every set of possibilites?  I think I just need a lawyer.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post consider subscribing!

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.