Testing Different Computer-Generated Wills

A New York Times author used four different programs to produce four computer-generated wills. She then took the wills to an estate planning attorney to review the drafts and point out potential issues. Here are just a few of the problems she found:

• Quicken Willmaker Plus 2011: The will left it up to New York state to decide how estate taxes would be paid.
• LegacyWriter: The testator’s residuary assets would be divided among her heirs according to state law, which is different in each state. Further, the will defined descendants in a way that would disinherit people that the testator may not want to disinherit. Finally, the program provided that all inheritance taxes, including those on assets passing outside the will, would be paid by assets passing under the will. This could cause a beneficiary to get much more or much less than the testator intended.
• LegalZoom: This will instructed the same thing that the LegacyWriter will did regarding inheritance taxes. This program also didn’t include the self-proving affidavit form with the will.
• Build-a-Will: This will didn’t designate who gets what assets or inform the testator when she skipped a page.

See Tara Siegel Bernard, In Using Software to Write a Will, a Lawyer is Still Helpful, N.Y. Times, Sept. 20, 2010.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this to my attention.