Should you write a Will yourself without taking professional help?
——————- This article was first published in moneycontrol.com on AUGUST 06, 2021, authored by Shantanu Gupta, PlanMyEstate.
While a DIY approach may help save some costs, one should adopt this route only when one is sure that their situation is pretty straight forward and would not put the beneficiaries of the Will to any inconvenience
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In this digital age, information flows freely, enabling one to manage his or her financial planning needs without engaging a domain expert. With a bit of effort and research, anyone can understand aspects relating to savings and investments. Hence, there is a growing trend of individuals managing their financial plans themselves. Writing a Will is a critical component of an individual’s financial plan. So, will a do-it-yourself (DIY) model also work while writing a Will?
Personal Finance essentially means managing your own money, savings, investments, financial goals, and the decisions relating to these aspects. Since these decisions are inherently personal and cannot be addressed with a ‘one size fits all’ approach, a significant number of individuals are handling their personal finance matters themselves.
For someone who wants to consider a DIY approach when it relates to writing a Will, the following aspects should be considered.
If you are someone who has a fair understanding of certain important aspects of Will writing, such as distribution of assets, appointment and role of executors, and whom and how to choose witnesses for your Will, then you may explore the DIY mode or online Will-writing options. These self-help options provide you the flexibility and convenience to write your Will at your leisure. This offers convenience also saves on fees in engaging a professional. Further, subsequent updates will also be easier since you can carry out those changes yourself instead of seeking professional help each time.
As mentioned earlier, while a DIY approach may be cost-effective in the short run, in case there are any errors in drafting the Will, or the wording in the Will is ambiguous, it may result in the Will becoming void or creating a dispute/ misunderstanding among your legal heirs, which will defeat the very purpose of writing a Will.
In one of the DIY Wills that we had reviewed, Aditi Mishra (name changed to protect identity), a widow, operated a family business of manufacturing kitchen utensils and was the majority shareholder of the private company that operated the business.
In her Will, she had bequeathed the shares of the private company to the sons in equal proportion but had passed on an office space in Delhi and a luxury car, which were owned by the company, to her daughter. Considering that the office space and car were assets of the Company, those assets could not be bequeathed through Aditi’s Will. If this error was not rectified, it could have been a major bone of contention among the children upon Aditi’s demise.
The above was just one of the many instances errors made in drafting a Will and if one is not careful, it could complicate the whole inheritance planning.
The decision to write your Will yourself or to seek the assistance of a professional would largely depend on your distribution objectives, nature of the assets that you hold and the composition of your family. If your family is nuclear and you wish to give everything to your spouse and/ or your children in an equitable manner, you may consider a DIY approach and, if required, approach a professional to just review your Will to ensure that it meets all requirements of a valid will.
However, in case you have interest in ancestral property, or wish to exclude one or more legal heirs from your Will, or want to provide for a special-needs child, or have minor children and need to appoint a guardian, or hold assets in foreign jurisdictions, or have business interest, or are a Karta of a Hindu Undivided Family (HUF), or you intend to include in your Will provisions such as “no-contest” or “life interest” in a property, you should seek professional assistance.
Thus, while DIY may help save some costs, one should adopt this route only when one is sure that their situation is pretty straight forward and would not put the beneficiaries of the Will to any inconvenience, impose avoidable costs on them and/ or cause any bitterness amongst them after the testator/ testatrix has passed away. Else, it would end up being penny-wise and pound foolish!