Every so often, someone contacts our office with a question that goes something like this: "I've already drafted my Will and other estate planning documents. Can I just have you review them, make any necessary changes, and help me get everything signed?"
It's a reasonable question, and I understand the thinking behind it. If you've already put in the time to prepare the documents, why pay an attorney to start over?
The short answer is that our office doesn't offer this service. And there's a reason for that.
Estate Planning Is About More Than the Documents
When someone comes to us for estate planning, we don't start by drafting a Will. We start by having a conversation.
We want to understand their family, their assets, what they're hoping to accomplish, and whether there are any particular concerns we should address.
Sometimes the plan is very straightforward. Other times, what initially sounds simple turns out to involve issues the client hadn't considered.
For example, a married couple might prepare matching Wills leaving everything to each other, and then to their children. That seems simple enough. But what happens if one spouse dies and the other remarries? What if one of their children dies before them? What if an adult child is struggling financially or has special needs?
And here's something that surprises a lot of people: Not everything you own will necessarily pass according to your Will. How accounts are titled and who you've named as beneficiaries can be just as important as what the Will says.
These are all things we talk through with our clients before we prepare their documents.
Why Not Just Review What Someone Has Already Written?
The challenge is that reviewing estate planning documents isn't quite as simple as proofreading them.
It's not just a matter of checking whether the language is correct or whether the documents meet Washington's signing requirements. We also need to determine whether the documents actually accomplish what the client intends.
And to do that, we need to understand the client's circumstances, ask the right questions, and look at how all of the pieces fit together.
A Will might be perfectly valid under Washington law and still produce a result that the person signing it never intended.
The same is true of Powers of Attorney and Health Care Directives. These documents are incredibly important, particularly if someone becomes unable to make decisions for themselves. We want to be confident that they give the right people the right authority and accurately reflect our client's wishes.
By the time we've done everything necessary to properly review documents someone prepared themselves, we may have spent just as much time as we would have preparing the documents in the first place.
What If I Just Need Help Signing?
We get this question occasionally, too.
Washington has specific requirements for signing Wills and certain other estate planning documents. Following those requirements is important, of course, but properly signing a document doesn't necessarily mean the document itself is going to work the way you intended.
For that reason, we don't offer signing appointments for estate planning documents that we haven't prepared.
So, What's the Best Approach?
At Kampbell Legal Planning, our approach is to prepare estate planning documents for our clients based on their individual circumstances.
That doesn't mean everyone needs an elaborate estate plan. In fact, many of our clients have fairly simple wishes, and our job is to help them accomplish those wishes without making things unnecessarily complicated.
But we do believe it's important to take the time to get to know our clients, understand what they own and how they own it, and make sure their documents work together.
And just as importantly, we want our clients to understand what they're signing and why.
Already Drafted Your Own Documents?
If you've already spent time preparing your own Will or other estate planning documents, that effort certainly isn't wasted. You've probably already thought about some of the most important questions, like who should inherit your assets, who should make decisions for you, and who you trust to handle things after you're gone.
Those are great things to have thought through before meeting with an attorney.
Our recommendation, though, is to work with an estate planning attorney to prepare a complete plan rather than simply having someone review documents you've drafted yourself.
At the end of the day, the goal of estate planning isn't just to have a set of signed documents in a folder. It's to make sure your wishes are carried out and to make things as easy as possible for the people you love.
And that's worth taking the time to get right.