Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

At least pay an attorney to look over your work, before you sign it.

Well, one example in which I was involved had a person who prepared their own estate plan using a computer program designed for such documents.

The decedent (person who died) intended to leave all their property to the relatives in certain percentages. Because the decedent was not familiar with the meanings of various legal terms they ended up leaving the vast majority of their estate (a couple of million dollars) to charities with whom the decedent had no contact. At the same time, the relatives who were intended to receive all the property received only a few thousand dollars.

So, I recommend being very careful about what you do and how you do it.

Caleb

Also, if you "own little", a Trust may not be what you need. If there is no real property and the estate is small, there may be no point unless you are addressing issues of conservatorship or incompetency. Be sure you have an Advance Directive in place that makes your end of life care decisions for you. There is risk in doing it yourself, to be sure, but if you have little to leave and only one heir, perhaps the risk is small enough for you to accept.

Go and read some books on trusts and estates, including the Nolo Press books written for lay people so that you know what can go wrong and what to do.

There are so many things that can go wrong. I agee that you should at least have your documents reviewed by an attorney. I just finished handling an estate of a decedent who drafted his own trust using the type of software you describe. The estate had to be probated, despite the existance of the trust, mainly because he did not transfer title of his property into the trust. Even the Probate was complicated. The decedent tried to draft some very complicated provisions himself, with little success. He also wanted his estate distributed into unequal "shares" among 13 beneficiaries. He included a "fund for burial" as one of these 13 beneficiaries. He apparently forgot to include close relatives and friends, but included individuals he had very little contact with.He failed to change the named beneficiary on his "paid on death" bank accounts.