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This web
site uses the most advanced online software technology
available today, guaranteed to create a perfect,
high-quality, lawyer-approved legal Will, customized to
your personal situation and local jurisdiction. We
are so confident in our proven technology, which has
taken over 5 years to develop, that we offer a 30-day
100% money back guarantee if you are not completely
satisfied with your Will.
“I used your service to write a Will
for my dear wife Christine who passed away this year. The Will was easy to
fill out and very straightforward. I never had one problem arise because of
the Will.” --- Keith Sutton,
Surrey, B.C. Read
more testimonials
How do we compare?
Why is the PartingWishes.com MyWill™ service
better than a do-it-yourself legal will kit?
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Most people do not need a lawyer, but be careful. It is
extremely important for everybody to have a legal Will. However, the whole
process of expressing one’s estate planning wishes has in many cases been made
overly complicated by the legal profession. There is no doubt that people with
large estates, sophisticated business interests, or unusual family situations,
should seek legal advice. But for the vast majority of people it is possible to
legally document one’s wishes, without paying exorbitant rates for legal advice.
Many publishers have attempted to address this need by heavily marketing
“do-it-yourself legal will kits” which have been easy to condemn by the legal
profession because, for the most part, they are awful. Here, we explain what
makes legal will kits so poor, and how the MyWill™ service at PartingWishes.com
differs. Most do-it-yourself will kits are too simple.
At PartingWishes.com we have investigated and reviewed a number of
“do-it-yourself legal will kits” and share the conclusions already made by the
CBC in their Market Place consumer affairs show that for the most part, they are
grossly inadequate and can lead to drawn out court battles where family members
try to interpret the statements of the testator. In an article published in the
Miami Herald in 2002, Peter Cohen, a Miami lawyer, said: "I really believe that
tremendous damage is being done with these kits. If they go wrong, the
consequence are grave.''. The key finding of these investigations has been that
most kits are just too simple, and, as a leading Canadian lawyer noted, "What is
not in here is more important than what is in here".
Buyer beware. To highlight the importance of the
above lawyer's statement, we show below some samples of “legal will kits”
collected by our team at PartingWishes.com and explain some of the pitfalls of
these kits. It will also become apparent why the MyWill™ service at
PartingWishes.com is in a completely different league and should not be compared
to these kits. All of the samples shown here are from assorted, well known
publishers, who advertise heavily or are prominently displayed in major
stationery and book stores. Here is an example of what you get when you purchase
one of the more popular will kits on the market today --- a simple piece of
paper with a few blanks to fill in. (Yes, you can actually buy this “kit” and we
paid good money for it.)
 
Sample #1
Is it a legal will? When a document claims to be a “legal will” you have to
understand what that means. If I type on a piece of paper “This is the Last Will
and Testament of me, John Doe, of Miami, Florida. I leave my entire estate to my
son James Doe.” Then, if I sign the document in front of two witnesses, and date it
– then I have a legal will. That is how a vendor can get away with calling their
product
a "legal will kit". Here is another example of a popular will
kit, which once again leaves the consumer with the daunting task of trying to
figure out how to fill in the blanks:
 
Sample #2
You must plan for the unexpected. As lawyers tend to point out, what is missing
in these simple will kits is a description
of what can go wrong. What happens if John Doe has two children? Or a wife? What
will happen if James Doe dies before John Doe? Contrary to popular belief, you
are not necessarily free to leave your estate to whoever you please. So a blank
piece of paper may be called a “legal will kit” but the completed document may have no
standing in a court of law.
 
Sample #3
You need to know what to think about. Some marginally better kits, such as the one pictured above, take account of the
"residue clause" in a will (i.e. making an alternate
plan in case one of the beneficiaries cannot receive a gift), but this sample is
still riddled with problems. Leaving blank spaces for the description of estate
distribution could easily result in these common pitfalls:
 | What happens if you have any dependents currently in your care? If you
provide for them today and they have an established relationship with you,
then they may have a claim on your estate (depending on State or Provincial
laws) |
| What if you have any debts that you owe or have anything owed to you? |
| What if you want to make a more detailed provision for each of your
beneficiaries not being able to receive a particular part of your property. For example, if one
beneficiary does not survive you, you may want to name an alternate
beneficiary. |
| What will happen if both parents are killed in the same accident? |
| What if you are not absolutely explicit in your wording? Terms like
“divide my estate equally between my cousins and my friend Bill” have at
least five different interpretations. |
The MyWill™ service has been designed to handle all of these issues.
Using an informative and comprehensive system such as the MyWill™ service at
PartingWishes.com makes more sense. It is not perfect for every situation, and
you can check our Frequently Asked Questions to
determine if MyWill™ is suitable for you. If it is, then you will benefit from
stepping through a series of questions ranging from your family status, your
wishes for estate distribution, setting up alternate plans, specifying
guardianships and trusts, and setting up charitable donations. We will then
build your responses into a legal will customized for your local jurisdiction
and based on templates created from legal reference books (the type that are
found on the bookshelves of every estate planning lawyer).
The MyWill™ service has several other advantages.
We have taken the ability for consumers to write their own
legal will to a whole new level. There are several additional features provided by the MyWill™ service that a do-it-yourself will kit cannot even begin
to address. These include:
| You can make use of the
ultimate convenience of the Internet to create your Will at your own pace,
online, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and
to make changes online at any time free of charge. |
| Our pay-one-price membership
model protects your investment for the rest of your life. There is no need
to purchase a do-it-yourself legal will kit in the first place, nor do you
need to purchase an upgraded version every year. |
| If you wish, we can inform you by email about any changes
in legislation which may have occurred in your jurisdiction that may require
changes to your Will. Or we can send you simple email reminders, no more
than
once a year, to remind you to consider updating your Will if any significant
changes have occurred in your life. |
| Our wizards, help and information are designed to be the
best on the market and are kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis. |
| The MyWill™ service provides you with complete
instructions and answers your questions in everyday language, free of legal
industry jargon. We have developed this service based on the requirements
of the public, not dictated by the legal profession. |
| By storing your Will online, it becomes easy to locate
and access by your designated friends or family members when the time is right.
There is no need for them to try to locate your Will, which may have been
documented on paper and stored in an unknown location, or perhaps destroyed by a
tragedy such as a house fire. |
| We have a strong focus on protecting the privacy
and security of your information. We use industry standard encryption
algorithms for storing all of your private information, and the design of
PartingWishes.com ensures that the contents of your Will are made available to
the specific people designated by yourself, and only at the appropriate
time. |
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You can even have your final document checked over for
consistency and completeness by one of the affiliates in our legal team. |
Don't take our word for it. Try it out for yourself.
We have worked with lawyers in Canada and the United States
to bring you the MyWill™ service and to ensure that it is of the highest
quality. Best of all, you can
try it now, without any commitment. Take a look at the
sample will kits described on this page, then try the PartingWishes.com MyWill™ service. Then decide.
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MyWill™ wizard
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