Some misinformed people choose to believe that administering a deceased estate is simple and easy, and therefore they think that they can save the estate some money by doing it themselves, without a specialist lawyer to assist them.
Those people don’t realise that for the executor of the Will of a deceased person in South Australia, DIY means taking all the risk upon themselves for no reward.
Trying to DIY the most important legal document in your life is a bad idea. This is a specialised area of law, and when you don’t know what you’re doing, it is very easy to make critical errors trying to do this yourself. Any mistakes you make won’t become apparent until you die, and it’s too late for you to fix them, so it will be your family who has the stress and cost of dealing with it all.
Here are 7 of the most common errors people make with DIY Wills:
Western Australian Supreme Court Master Craig Sanderson has publically stated in a 2014 judgment that “Homemade Wills are a curse,” and inevitably lead to protracted and expensive legal battles in family disputes involving substantial estates.
Master Sanderson said the legal issue around the proper determination of the deceased’s Will could have been avoided if he had “consulted a lawyer and signed off on a Will that reflected his wishes”.
Master Sanderson warned of the dangers of homemade Wills, saying there was no question that engaging a properly qualified and experienced lawyer to draft a Will was “money well spent”.
“But where, as here, the estate of the deceased is substantial, the Will is opaque and there is no agreement among the beneficiaries, the inevitable result is an expensive legal battle which is unlikely to satisfy everyone.”
This view is supported by Rod Genders, who is a senior Australian lawyer specialising in trusts, Wills and estate planning, accident compensation, probate and deceased estate administration in Adelaide and throughout South Australia. His boutique specialist law firm, which was founded on 1848, is one of the oldest and most respected in Australia.
Some people resist or resent spending money on estate planning, because they think (wrongly) they won’t gain the benefits themselves.
In difficult financial times like these, some folks may be tempted to postpone or minimise what might seem like a non-essential expenditure.
Every week, thousands of television advertisements from insurance companies encourage people to bypass lawyers and create their own Wills, using cheap or free “Will kits”.
The big ugly truth about these kits is that people make a lot of mistakes when they try to create their own Wills and estate planning documents. They have been lulled into a false sense of security. But answering just one question incorrectly or overlooking something such as appointing a guardian for children can lead to major problems down the road.
There are lots of traps for the unwary, and this whole area of law regarding deceased estates contains a hidden minefield which you absolutely want to avoid. And with a bit of education & planning, they can. Otherwise they won’t know the questions to ask, or what to do with the answers.
