A host of websites offer inexpensive, or in some cases free, preparation of many legal documents for everything ranging from wills and estate planning, to divorces and name changes, to setting up and incorporating a business.
Some sites offer very detailed text or sometimes even videos to guide you in choosing your required services. After creating an account, there’s a site which asks you certain questions and your answers to these questions are used in making a customized document. There are sites which offer the simple forms for free while other sites allow you to download files for reference in making forms yourself.
Do you know what you are going to do next after you have generated that legal document? The site may provide that information for you, but it will vary from state to state and may vary by locality. A lawyer would be able to navigate through that for you, have the necessary paperwork ready, or even offer safe storage if necessary such as in the case of wills, which don’t have to be filed until its owner passes away.
You may be derailed in your efforts in cases when your answers are not straightforward. For example, in a second marriage you may want to leave your home to your children, but allow your spouse to live there until he or she dies. Websites may not be able to offer solutions for a lifetime estate.
Online forms will not be able to handle complex cases. If such is the case, you are going to need an actual lawyer who will continue to ask the necessary questions until such time that you get the desired answers. The good news is that most forms don’t require payment until you finish completing your information, so if you realize halfway through, or even at the end, that you cannot do what you want you can cancel the transaction. The time you spent trying to do the form yourself would not be wasted anyhow if you just think of it as your initial briefing before actually going inside the attorney’s office.
Another pleasant surprise may be that the visit to the attorney’s office may not be as expensive as you think. When evaluating your options, contact the attorney’s office first to know their rates for a particular service that you are looking for. If the rates are comparable, you would rather prefer a personal meeting and an expert handle the paperwork rather than going through the motions impersonally through the internet.