Do I Need An Attorney to Draft a Will, Power of Attorney or Trust in Florida?

The easy answer to the question is, No you don’ need an attorney to draft your will, power of attorney or health care surrogate. Any person is free to go online, visit a document preparation service or pick some form out of a book and attempt to make a will or other estate planning document. Sure you may save a few bucks in doing your documents this way, but in my experience you can wind up paying far more for this in the long run.
The reason I say you will probably wind up paying far more money in the long run is there is a very good chance you will do something wrong at some point in time in either putting the proper language into the documents or you will make one or many errors in executing or signing the documents.
Wills, Powers of Attorney, Trusts and other legal documents are technical and complex documents and the slightest errors at any stage in the preparation process can make the entire document invalid. While this is certainly bad enough an even more excruciating consequence is that an improperly drafted document can cause heartache, pain and expense for your friends and loved ones.
I’ve been practicing law for nearly ten years and over the course of my practice, the most contentious and costly estate cases were caused by improperly drafted documents.   Oftentimes the parties fighting each honestly believe they are fighting for what the deceased wanted. In cases where this is true both competing sides feel it is their moral duty to their deceased love one or friend to carry out their wishes, no matter the emotional or financial cost.
When I work with a client to draft a will, power of attorney, trust or any other estate planning document I do far more than just fill in blanks on a form. I spend on average two hours meeting with the client to consider both the financial and many other personal elements that go into the drafting of these documents. Many times in the course of examining these areas, we uncover other issues and liabilities that a client has never considered but we are able to address these issues before they become problematic.
I charge only a few hundred dollars to draft all these documents, and while you could get them done cheaper elsewhere, in the long run you’re better off visiting my website where you’ll find more information about estate planning and litigation or contact my office directly at 727/542-5571.   In addition, please visit the website of the Florida Bar where you can find a wealth of information on a variety of estate planning topics. The website can be accessed at www.floridabar.org/tfb/TFBConsum.nsf/48e76203493b82ad852567090070c9b9/a0091ab18d4875d085256b2f006c5b75?OpenDocument