Did you know that parachute designs go back to the Renaissance period? The first successful recorded parachute jump was made in 1783 by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France. Yet today, modern parachutes are still meticulously and carefully packed by hand.
Estate plans and parachutes have one key thing in common: when you pull them out to use them, it is too late to make any changes. Which makes the preparation critical.
Can’t I do it myself?
There are a lot of tempting offers for “do it yourself” estate planning, online or otherwise. There are only two problems with these offers: the user, and the system. Other than that, you have nothing to worry about.
The User
I can buy all the wrenches and what-not from my favorite tool place, but it doesn’t make me a mechanic. And my decade of experience in working with families in creating effective estate plans doesn’t help me in the garage. However, it does help me in choosing the most effective estate planning tools for your family, whether it be a simple will, living trust, special needs trust, or any of the many estate planning tools. And it helps me make sure the job gets done, right, the first time.
The System
Online systems are limited by design. They can’t give you legal advice – only an attorney can do that. All they can do is filter you through a series of pre-determined choices that may or may not actually fit your family. Those one-size-fits-all garments work great for the 2% who actually are size “normal,” but for the rest of us, we’ve realized that we’re not like “everybody else.”