Cooking Up a Will

• Ask your lawyer to draft a will for you
• Use a step-by-step legal guide or computer program to draft your own
• Use a standard, fill-in-the-blanks will form

While wills are formal, ultimately public, documents, they’re also very personal. What they’re doing, after all, is detailing the size and distribution of your estate.

You can make a will three ways

What’s Best for You

Using a lawyer who specializes in wills and estates is smart, and probably essential if your estate is at all complex, involves real estate, or includes any bequests that might be challenged in court. One disadvantage may be the price tag, since lawyers typically charge by the hour. But getting the details right can be invaluable.

If you use a guidebook or computer program to write your own will, you’ll probably spend less to create the document. It may be smart, though, to have a lawyer review your work so that your estate doesn’t end up paying court fees or estate taxes equal to the money that you saved by writing it yourself—and more.

The advantages of a fill-in-the-blanks will are easy availability—you can find them onlline—and economy. The major disadvantage is that they’re inflexible and cover only the most generic situations, like leaving everything to your spouse. Is a fill-in-the-blanks will better than no will at all? Probably. But there’s no substitute for sound legal advice.

Making It Official

The steps to making your will official are clearly spelled out in the law. Your execution, or signature, has to be attested to, or witnessed, by two or three people who must sign the will in your presence. The witnesses don’t have to read the will itself, or know what’s in it, but you must tell them it’s your will that you’re asking them to witness.

In some states a witness may not inherit anything that’s included in the will, and in others people mentioned in the will may not serve as a witness. Sometimes the witnesses must appear in court when a will is filed for probate, but in many states witnesses can instead sign a document stating, or affirming, their participation at the time of the will’s execution.

You should sign only one copy of your will and file it with your attorney, at home, or in some other safe place that is easy to get at. Safe deposit boxes are not a good idea, since they are frequently sealed when the owner dies, making their contents inaccessible.

If your will can’t be found, the court will presume it’s been revoked. On the other hand, multiple signed copies of the will can cause delays, since, in most cases, all of them must be accounted for before the will can be probated. Unsigned copies, or photocopies, on the other hand, are fine and can be useful for reference.

Will Power

You can change your will as often as you want. There’s no last word until you die, which means you can change every detail from one year to the next, and back again, as long as you’re willing to foot the bill. When you make a new will, though, you should say specifically that you are revoking any prior will. If you have the old one, or copies of it, you should destroy them. That way, there will be no question about your intentions.

If you’re making only minor changes, however, you can add a codicil to your will. Like the will itself, a codicil is a legal document that details your wishes. It must meet specific standards in order to be valid, including the requirement for witnesses.

Dividing Your Assets

When you divide your property among your beneficiaries, it’s important to structure your will so that your wishes can be respected. For example, suppose you leave stock to your son, but the stock has been sold? Or what if you leave one daughter $75,000 and everything else to another—and $75,000 is all that’s left after your bills are paid?

To avoid the most common problems, experts suggest you leave all major bequests as a percentage of your total estate, instead of a dollar amount. You can also name contingent beneficiaries, if your first choices die before you do, can’t be found, or don’t want your money.

Simultaneous Death

Many married people leave their entire estates to their surviving spouse, and to other beneficiaries if the spouse has died first. What that doesn’t resolve, however, is what happens if the couple dies at the same time, or within a very short period of each other. To cover that possibility, you can include a simultaneous death clause in your will to pass your property directly to your surviving beneficiaries.

You can also require that any benefi-ciary survive you by a certain length of time—often 45 days—in order to inherit. This provision saves double taxes and court costs, and lets you designate the next in line for your property.