Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Hawaii

Home Made Wills

These Wills can be legal. Since state law controls the validity of a Will, your state law should be consulted. Some states have restrictive laws relating to Wills. Others, such as my state of Colorado, have very liberal laws.

Another problem with these types of Wills, is that you may not be able to draft them specifically enough to apply to your own situation. They can be good reference sources, but I don't recommend that you sign it and use it as your will.

Bernie Greenberg

Homemade wills.

Usually the text generated is valid, if not artful. It's a good tool to run before going to a lawyer. Lawyers like people who have done this on their own before coming to them because it saves a lot of time to have you already gathered information and made a few decisions.

But the wills themselves are often NOT valid!!! When not valid, a will is generally thrown out entirely.

The most obvious sticking points: technical legal formalities, which, by the way, are not overlooked as mere technicalities as one might hope or expect in other areas of law. In particular, there are formalities for the signing and the witnessing of the signature which are very often the subject of litigation. For example, entire fortunes can be lost because, for example, one of the witnesses (who had actually seen the document being signed) didn't sign as witness in the presence of the testator -- he got distracted at the hospital and someone brought it to him later. Who would have thought? There are other problems with doing it yourself, e.g., do you copy the signed document before you staple the pages together? The signing ceremony is highly specific.

You're suprised that I haven't addressed myself to the content of the generated will. I believe that the will you get from most off-the-shelf packages, if you are not too sloppy about who you name or what you leave and how you identify those people and posessions, will do a sufficient job and net you a decent result. However, if you have more than $100,000, say, or more than one or two possible beneficiaries, or if you have any possibility that someone will contest your will, I recommend you get the extra protection that going to a lawyer will bring you. For more ideas on this, see my webpage at http://www.tiac.net/meridian and answer the questionnaire, at least to yourself. Most (though not all) of the questions which would lead to the answer "yes, you need a will" will also lead you to my opinion that you need a lawyer to draft the will for you.

Lawyers are also good particularly good as witnesses to the competence of the testator, an issue almost always raised when there's squabbling over the inheritance.