Why Use an Estate Planning Attorney?

In a time when limitless information is available to anyone with an Internet connection and generative AI is all the buzz, why should anyone spend time and money to use an estate planning attorney when they can just do everything themselves (or have AI do it)? After all, at least in Florida, an attorney is not required for someone to create an estate plan.

This is a fair question and one that comes up occasionally during consultations. The short answer is that there are a lot of nuances to estate planning–are you confident you fully understand them and can execute a plan that will do what you want it to do? Unfortunately, even for simple plans, there are a number of traps that can catch those who do not know better. Oftentimes, these issues do not come to light until it is too late to easily correct them. While AI can spit out a will or power of attorney in seconds, or a form can be downloaded, these usually do not contain comprehensive instructions on how to comply with Florida laws or explain what certain language actually means, and this can lead to problems. Here are a few of the ways a competent Florida estate planning attorney brings value to the planning process.

Ensure Your Plan Does What You Want

The most important way a Florida wills and trusts attorney helps during the planning process is to make sure that your plan is set up to do what you want it to do and all documents are executed correctly. With so much information at our fingertips, it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security and feel we have a better grasp of a situation than may actually be the case. In just the past few months, I have encountered a number of difficult situations that could have been easily avoided had someone taken the time to consult with a Florida wills and trusts lawyer. 

In one situation, a widow gave me her late husband’s will, which he had drafted and executed himself, sure that this was so simple that an attorney would be a waste of money. However, the will signing was not properly witnessed, so the will was invalid in Florida. This meant her husband died as if he had no will at all. When I then looked at the widow’s will, which her husband had also drafted, it mistakenly gave all of her property to only two of her three children, which was not at all what she intended.

In another case, a mother and daughter explained they drafted their own deeds to make sure that real estate would automatically pass to the daughter at the mother’s death. But what they actually did was immediately give the daughter a one-half interest in the property, while the mother kept the other half. Had I not corrected their mistake, the result would have required not only that the mother’s half of the property go through probate, but that it be split between all of her children and not go just to her daughter. 

In the worst case, an unmarried couple who had been together for decades purchased a home with one partner’s money but titled the property solely in the name of the other partner. The partner holding title died shortly thereafter, and that partner’s children–not the person he had been with for decades and who actually bought the property–stand to inherit the property unless a court intervenes. This is an extremely difficult process with no guarantee the surviving partner gets anything.

While some of these situations can be fixed, it is usually much more expensive and takes much more time than if the issues were avoided to begin with. Had each of these people taken just a few minutes to speak with a Florida estate planning lawyer when they were creating their plan, they could have saved thousands of dollars and made sure their plan did what they intended it to do.

Guidance to Plan for the Unexpected

In addition to making sure the law is followed and the correct language is used in documents, a thorough Florida estate planning attorney should also ask a lot of questions during the planning process. While this helps the attorney understand the client’s goals, it also helps the client consider that there are a lot of situations that can arise that they may not have thought about. For example, for grandparents who want to leave everything to their children, is there any plan in place if a child dies first and a sizable amount of money may pass to a young grandchild? What about spouses where one is on Medicaid–does the non-recipient spouse’s will have the appropriate language to shield assets from a Medicaid lien? For parents of young children, do the wills have guardianship provisions and testamentary trusts for the children, or has a declaration of preneed guardian been executed and recorded? For a Florida power of attorney, does it give the agent enough authority to act, or does it give more power than the principal intended? Has a revocable trust been properly funded? There are many things a competent Florida estate planning lawyer should discuss with you to make sure you are creating a plan that suits your intentions, and these will likely go unaddressed by a downloaded form or AI-generated response.

Address Problems as They Come Up

Finally, if a problem arises, it is almost always better to address it right away rather than wait to see how things play out. If you worked with a Florida wills and trusts attorney to put your estate plan in place and an issue comes up later–say, an intended beneficiary of your will dies unexpectedly or a divorce creates uncertainty over part of a plan–the attorney should be familiar with your goals and values and be able to come up with a solution that will adhere to these. Additionally, if a legal issue comes up, like a court decision that clarifies that a provision in a will no longer means what attorneys thought it meant, then your estate planning attorney can notify you that you may need to update your plan. These are the types of things that otherwise would probably not come up until it is too late to change them.

As you can see, there are a number of ways a Florida estate planning attorney can bring value to your estate plan, though they are not always obvious. Even for those who have truly simple estates and may be able to create a plan on their own that suits their needs, taking the time to at least consult with a Florida wills and trusts attorney can help ensure the plan follows Florida law and that the plan actually does what is intended. And with many Florida estate planning lawyers offering free consultations, as we do at Merhar Law, that conversation may cost you nothing but potentially save your loved ones a lot of headache and money later.