"kastnna" <kastnna[at]auburnalum.org> wrote
- quote -

You nailed it.

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On Jun 11, 10:30*am, "Elle" <honda.lion...[at]spamnocox.net> wrote:

- quote -

Yes, I think perhaps we do!

To continue the unstable comparison that neither of us made... I
wouldn't even think of performing my own surgery, but I don't go to
the doctor for the sniffles, either.

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joeNOSPAM[at]bea.com wrote:
- quote -

Joe, I hear you on that, I balk at paying for database software - why
people don't just provide that for free is beyond me! Professionally
developed apps are bug-ridden and never do what you want anyway, and
they just pad the bill with unnecessary consulting and customization fees.

You see my point I hope...it's a professional service, you can pay for
it or you can develop it in-house. And realistically there are plenty of
people that aren't going to do a good job with it no matter how many
how-to guides they read. So part of the DIY ethic is a good sense of
whether something is within your grasp, and that's your decision to
make. Some simple estate documents require little more than a signature,
but others require an in-depth understanding of the tax code, probate
code, etc., that take some time and expertise to master. The $3k estate
plan is probably going to include some of the latter. You should be able
to find local attorneys to do more basic estate plans for less than that.

But for pete's sake get something more up to date than a CD that kicks
you out at $600k! If it did so because of the federal estate tax, that
is - it's been ten years since $600k had any significance in that
context. A very good source of DIY materials is www.nolo.com, I have a
few of their estate titles that make good references. Incidentally I'm a
licensed attorney and beyond the basics...I hire it out. Getting it
wrong is expensive, as evidenced by the higher insurance rates
associated with estate planning practices.

-Tad

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On Jun 10, 4:47*pm, "Elle" <honda.lion...[at]spamnocox.net> wrote:
- quote -

The problem with using one example to support your argument is, there
is always a counter example. I have had one major and one minor
surgery. I would never do that myself at home with my steak knives,
and I have very sharp steak knives.

I would equate getting my trust done, and done right, with surgery.

- quote -

No, not magic or god like quality. Just the background, education,
and experience. Nothing magical about it.


- quote -

That's why you have to research the specialists to find the best and
the right one for your purpose.

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In article <UMG3k.2802$cW3.156[at]nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com> ,
Mark Bole <makbo[at]pacbell.net> wrote:


- quote -

"No Heroic Measures" is insufficient by itself. When the occasion arose
in an ICU setting the nurse presented me with a list of 5 items starting
with paddles and graduating to "Open heart Message". Fortunately I was
able to reach our primary care physician to help me decide. (I wasn't
the patient but the patient told me later that I had made the right
decision)

I also learned that in consenting to many procedures (including some
interventional X-Rays & scans) you have to temporarily revoke "No heroic
measures"

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"kastnna" <kastnna[at]auburnalum.org> wrote
snip for brevity
- quote -

Okie-doke. Anecdotal experience counts AFAIC.

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"kastnna" <kastnna[at]auburnalum.org> wrote
- quote -

I agree with Douglas, you, and no doubt others that there
are certainly many who will have complicated wishes re their
estate (yes, absolutely, like trusts), and an attorney is
undoubtedly the best route, particularly if one does not
have the time to even investigate the possibilities. Or if
one is not even sure s/he knows all the possibilities.
Perhaps we are all a bit more in agreement than not.

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On Jun 10, 3:46*pm, "Elle" <honda.lion...[at]spamnocox.net> wrote:
- quote -

Don't worry, hard time not received. To clarify, I have never seen
either method challenged by the IRS or a court. What I meant was
simply that when I sit down and start outlining what the trust
document will accomplish, I often find that the DIY'er didn't include
everything the creator intended.

In addition, I occasionally find that a DIY'er has done an excellent
job, but unfortunately there was a more efficient way to do it. For
example, an ILIT can be perfectly drafted and stand up to any court,
but unless Crummey Provisions were included, the grantor isn't going
to be making efficient gifts. Of course, in reality ILITs, gifting,
and Crummey provisions are more complicated than that, but it was the
first example that came to mind.

All in all, my non-scientific and purely anecdotal experience has been
that "estate planning pro se" is penny wise and pound foolish.

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Elle et al,

Just for the record, I do agree that many of the simple documents are
boiler-plate and probably DIY for anyone involved and responsible
enough to be utilizing groups like this one. Even Quicken has a decent
software bundle for simple wills, POAs, and healthcare directives.

My previous comments focus on the various trusts that not only save on
estate taxes, but shelter assets from creditors, and control corpus
distribution for decades after demise. Between the peace of mind that
D. Johnson also mentioned and the legal recourse for mistakes (through
malpractice) I personally can't justify the small savings of DIY. To
each his own, I guess.

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"Mark Bole" <makbo[at]pacbell.net> wrote
- quote -

As you suggest, this particular aspect of planning for when
one is mentally absent is especially boilerplate. My state
even has the forms for a living will (a.k.a. medical power
of attorney etc.) free online and downloadable, with exact
instructions for completing them. Folks should google for
same in their state.

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"Mark Bole" <makbo[at]pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:UMG3k.2802$cW3.156[at]nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com...
- quote -

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Elle wrote:
- quote -

You got that right. When reading a first draft of my health care POA
regarding whether or not to take "heroic measures", what was on the page
was the exact opposite of what I had stated during the interview!

Just for fun, here is the first relevant thing I could find in a search
on "heroic measures will" (item #4 in the search results):

- quote -

and so on and so forth.

-Mark Bole

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On 2008-06-10 13:50:18 -0700, PeterL <po.ning[at]gmail.comsaid:
- quote -

I wonder if you are working with today's health care system
much. The solutions to the last few health ailments (serious
and not-so) I have suffered and close relatives and friends
have suffered, despite having outstanding health insurance,
has been greatly abetted--and sometimes solved--through
personal research. I have been steered completely wrong by
at least four ostensibly well-qualified doctors over the
last ten years. Three of them had flat-out wrong diagnoses.
One of them cost me an arm-and-a-leg and way too much pain
and inconvenience. A fourth was trying to make money for his
hospital by overprescribing X-rays.

The myth prevails that "specialists" possess some magic,
some god-like quality, in all instances. But in fact today,
access to information is so easy, and one's personal
interest in a good outcome so much greater, that a good
education can solve many of the problems previously referred
to specialists. This is particularly so when the
profit-motive of specialists is often higher than the desire
to serve the client well.

Naysayers, please do not presume I mean all specialists. I
mean many.

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On 2008-06-10 13:50:18 -0700, PeterL <po.ning[at]gmail.com> said:

- quote -

I think you will find that a lot of the legal work, not only in
drafting wills, but also in probating estates and related duties,
actually is done by legal secretaries with minimal involvment of the
lawyer, who perhaps checks the document in a cursory way at the end of
the process.

Be that as it may, I would say that the analogy between do-it-yourself
will-writing and medical diagnosis is not very convincing. Medical
diagnosis is a vastly more complicated procedure, requiring consideraby
more years of training and experience than routine legal work.
Do-it-yourself will-drafting would be more comparable to going to a
drug store with a cold and trying to decide which brand of cold
medication to pick up off the shelf. You could go a doctor's office to
get medicine to be really safe, or even go to the ER and waste people's
time there, but how many people think that is really necessary?

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"Elle" <honda.lioness[at]spamnocox.net> wrote:


- quote -

I am a DIY type by nature. I've always handled my own investing, financial
planning (thanks, guys), home repairs, and most of my hobbies involve building
things. But a key to successful DIY is knowing your limits.

As I mentioned earlier, we hired one of the best estate attorneys in the area to
handle our wills and other bad-news documents. It might not have been necessary
to go that far, white shoe law firms have a lot of overhead. But our situation
was moderately complex. Looking back, I know we would have made some serious
mistakes if we had gone DIY.

In other contexts, you have talked about the value of buying piece of mind. I
think that is some of what we bought. Mistakes here can be costly. You won't
be around to say "What I really meant was..."

-- Doug

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On Jun 10, 10:07*am, "Elle" <honda.lion...[at]spamnocox.net> wrote:
- quote -

Well, doctors also make mistakes. But I am not going to start doing
my own medical diagnosis.


- quote -

But estate planning lawyers do much more than just give you a
boilerplate set of forms.

- quote -

And very often from people who think they can do it themselves, and
were too late to come to a realization that they have screwed
themselves by trying to save money.

I am not a lawyer, nor am married to one.

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"kastnna" <kastnna[at]auburnalum.org> wrote
- quote -

Not to give you a hard time, but more for clarification:
Fell short how? Did you see any of the DIY plans tested, say
by legal challenge? Did you feel they were very open to
legal challenge, or only somewhat open to legal challenge?
Or did they "fall short" in seeming not to cover all bases?

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On Jun 10, 1:04*pm, Mark Bole <ma...[at]pacbell.net> wrote:
- quote -

Estate planning is a fairly common task in my business. I've seen
estate plans drawn up by both sides and the DIY plans consistently
fall short, IMO. There's simply too many exceptions, caveats, and
changes in the law for the layperson. As I said, I'm "in the biz" and
I still went to a lawyer for my estate planning (albeit I knew exactly
what I wanted when I walked in). Without cites and sources, I guess
we'll have to agree to disagree on this point.

Another point, attorney's have E&O/malpractice coverage to potentially
indemnify any mistakes. A do-it-yourselfer only has himself to blame.

Lastly, and I don't think you disagree, the comlexity probably plays a
large role. A simple will or power of attorney may be DIY, but it also
only saves you a couple hundred dollars. Drafting credit shelter
trusts, QTIPs, ILITs, and the like are difficult to do and thus cost
the most.

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"Mark Bole" <makbo[at]pacbell.net> wrote
- quote -

I second consideration of this and, more generally, the
advice to always do much homework on the topic at hand
before meeting with an attorney. For one, it's more likely
than not to cut down on how much time the attorney will bill
you. Though not all attorneys charge by the hour.

We need a misc.DIY.legal.moderated, run by those attorneys,
paralegals, legal secretaries and the more experienced
laypeople, who believe in empowering people and letting them
know when they are approaching the limits of DIY-ism. Plenty
of low income people might benefit, for one. Legal
information simply is not as arcane as it once was, given
the internet and increased literacy.

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Elle wrote:
- quote -

Advice worth considering. The ideal solution might be to do the bulk of
the work yourself and then have a professional check it over for glaring
errors, but I don't think most lawyers would offer that service.

I neglected to mention in my previous post, one of the services
typically included when using an attorney is actually putting assets
INTO the living trust, without which the whole exercise becomes pretty
meaningless.

Even that may be something you can do yourself; however it also comes
down to how you value your spare time, and whether you would like to
become an arm-chair expert in these topics to help prepare yourself for
a new career in estate/financial/tax planning when you "retire" from
your main job.

-Mark Bole

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