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As Americans continue to face challenges in
this economy, we are increasingly becoming a do-it-yourself
society. People are looking to do all of their own work to save
money and avoid paying experienced, licensed professionals for
services many believe they can more inexpensively provide for
themselves. As this trend continues, more and more people are
being driven to the Internet for services and “forms” that
purport to be authentic, legally sufficient, and in some cases -
FREE. Beware; you can create a great disservice for both
yourself and your family by wasting time and money on Internet
services and products that are often legally invalid. Worse
yet, there are now inexpensive, “valid” legal forms on the
Internet that are purportedly prepared for you by experienced
attorneys, former judges and even law school professors. All
you have to do – type in the answers to a few simple questions.
Sounds great, right? Here’s the bad news -
many of these inexpensive forms turn out to be legally “valid”
but turn out not to be when read in conjunction with the laws of
your specific state. The documents may reflect only part of your
wishes, or even worse, the documents express exactly the
opposite of what you intend or desire. How does that happen?
Those experienced attorneys, former judges and law school
professors who are supposedly drafting your documents are not
actually drafting your documents. More commonly, your documents
are being created from pre-set forms filled-in by clerks, law
students, paralegals and administrators. Due to the sheer
volume of documents being sent out by those services, there is
no possible way every document can be drafted, analyzed and
reviewed by an experienced, licensed, attorney in your state of
residence. Many of the Internet sites provide documents that
are not even prepared or reviewed by a live person. They are
simply automated forms that are spit back to you without any
human review for validity and errors. Many of these “forms”
require you to fill in a few simple blanks on the form with no
understanding of your specific needs.
Estate planning documents that, at the very
least, grant powers and authority to specific individuals,
express end of life decisions and distribute assets to
beneficiaries are not the types of documents and issues that can
be made into “cookie cutter” style forms. There is not a one
size fits all; every situation is different. It is critical to
talk to an experienced, licensed, professional face to face
regarding your wishes, desires and decisions.
Many think that some of the simplest legal
documents to prepare are Powers of Attorney and Living Wills.
How hard can those documents be to get right? After all,
they’re basically forms, right? I can do that myself! It
doesn’t matter where I live, any attorney providing those
services over the Internet can properly draft those
documents…right? WRONG. A client recently relayed a horrifying
revelation about a living will prepared by a popular Internet
service. It was incorrectly drafted and would have forced the
doctors to indefinitely sustain a brain dead person on life
support despite that person’s wishes to not be artificially
sustained for more than seven days. Luckily, the error was
caught by a licensed professional before the family was dropped
into that terrifying situation. Another client requested a
review of powers of attorney, again prepared through a popular
Internet site, because they were not being honored by the very
financial institutions for which the person granted Power of
Attorney. Those Powers of Attorney were drafted incorrectly and
required a determination by the Court regarding the person’s
capacity before the documents would be valid. Due to this
glaring error, that family was forced to incur huge Court costs
to obtain a necessary order from the Court for the documents to
even be honored. That is an error that is completely avoidable,
a mistake that should never have happened and a substantial cost
that could have been prevented.
Here’s the bottom line…while you might
research a complex illness or disease on the Internet to gain
knowledge and power in your specific situation, you certainly
would not decide on the proper course of treatment for your
illness without consulting, in person, a skilled and respected
physician. More colorfully, you certainly wouldn’t perform
surgery on yourself with the help of someone on the Internet who
claims to be a doctor. So, why would you attempt to draft your
own legal documents; most especially, those documents that can
affect you and your family in important life and death
decisions?
For more information on Powers of Attorney
and Living Wills, please visit our website at
www.TheTiptonLawFirm.com or contact an estate planning
attorney at:
The Tipton Law Firm
3200 Cherry Creek South Drive, Suite 650
Denver, Colorado 80209
303-220-8428 |
