Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

Re: On Line Living trust forms

The form, while probably "legal", may or may not do what you need it to do, and unless it comes with funding instructions, won't help you much. Having a lawyer review the form is an option, but it may be the same price or less to just have a lawyer prepare the living trust in the first place.

Re: On Line Living trust forms

No. but exercise huge CAUTION. As a litigator, I have seen problems with many home made legal forms, obtained from libraries, copy a friends, obtained online.

Re: On Line Living trust forms

While I do not know what software is out there for the general public, I would strongly advise you against using such software. Making the "correct" choices for your situation requires too much legal knowledge. Even one of the non-estate planning attorneys in our office had trouble using trust software.

As to lawyer review, that is a good idea. However, by the time you factor in the software cost and the attorney cost, you are getting closer to having an attorney draft the estate plan in the first place. And if the attorney finds problems, then the cost to fix the problems will surely exceed the cost of having the attorney doing it from start to finish.

I hope I have helped. I wish you the best of luck.

Kai H. Wessels, Esq.

(tel. 877-Wessels)

Re: On Line Living trust forms

You don't need a lawyer to make the forms legal, but I strongly suggest using a lawyer to make the living trust--I used to feel more sheepish about saying people should use attorneys, but a huge part of my law firm's income is now derived from fixing or fighting against the "do-it-yourself" or paralegal-drafted estate plans, and have to say that attorney-drafted documents have an enormously higher success rate.

To have an even better chance, I'd recommend getting a referral to an attorney/law firm that routinely drafts estate plans.