How are we better?

How are we better?

"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.)  

How is the LegalWills.ca MyWill™ service better than a do-it-yourself legal Will kit?

The Keyholder® Advantage. Where do you plan on storing your Will? Can your Executor easily locate all of your assets? When you create a Will here at LegalWills.ca, you can name up to 20 Keyholders, such as your Executor. After your death, they can unlock the documents and information you have chosen to share with them, once the waiting period you set has passed. Each Keyholder can also have a free digital wallet card, as a PDF or in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, with a QR code that takes them straight to the Keyholder sign-in. Adding Keyholders is free. Some of the services they can unlock are paid, such as MyFuneral™ (where you can record where your Will is kept), MyLifeLocker™ (a detailed record of your assets), and MyVault™ (your important files), and Keyholder access needs an active membership. Learn how Keyholders work.

A good option for people planning their own Will. It is important for everybody to have a legal Will. An online Will service is a good option for people who are comfortable planning their own Will. If your situation is more complex, for example if you own a business, have a family member who will need long-term financial support, are separated, own significant property in another country, or have a large or complex estate, a lawyer (or a notary in Québec) can give you advice that no online service can. In Québec, a notary can also prepare a notarial Will, which our service does not produce. Many publishers have tried to give people a simple way to write their own Will by selling "do-it-yourself legal Will kits", which legal professionals have long criticized because, for the most part, they leave too much to chance. Here, we explain where legal Will kits fall short, and how the MyWill™ service at LegalWills.ca differs.

Most do-it-yourself Will kits are too simple.  At LegalWills.ca, we have investigated and reviewed a number of "do-it-yourself legal Will kits", and we share the conclusion already reached by the CBC's Marketplace consumer affairs show that, for the most part, they are inadequate and can lead to drawn-out court battles as family members try to interpret what the testator meant. In an article published in the Miami Herald, Peter Cohen, a Miami lawyer, said: "I really believe that tremendous damage is being done with these kits. If they go wrong, the consequences 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 statement, we show below some samples of "legal Will kits" collected by our team at LegalWills.ca, and explain some of the pitfalls of these kits. It will also become apparent why the MyWill™ service at LegalWills.ca is in a different league from these kits. The samples shown here, from Canada and the United States, came from well-known publishers and were sold in major stationery stores and bookshops. Here is an example of what you get with one of these kits: a simple piece of paper with a few blanks to fill in. (Yes, this "kit" was really on sale, and we paid good money for it.)

Competitor 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 Toronto, Ontario. I leave my entire estate to my son James Doe."  Then, if I sign the document in front of two witnesses and date it, I have a legal Will. That is how a vendor can call their product a "legal Will kit".  Here is another example of a Will kit, which once again leaves you with the daunting task of trying to work out how to fill in the blanks:

Competitor 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 not do what you intended, and it may not stand up to a challenge in court.

Competitor 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 still has serious gaps. Leaving blank spaces for the description of estate distribution could easily result in these common pitfalls:

• What happens if you have any dependants 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 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 with these issues in mind.  Using an informative and comprehensive system such as the MyWill™ service at LegalWills.ca 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 custom-made for your local jurisdiction and based on templates created from legal reference books (the kind found on the bookshelves of lawyers who prepare Wills).

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:

• Great value for money.  Your purchase includes a year of unlimited updates. After that, a membership is optional and never renews automatically: it lets you keep updating your documents and printing them in full, and keeps your Keyholders' access active. The Will you have signed stays valid whether or not you renew.
• Your Will can change as your life does.  When something changes, such as a marriage, a new child, or a move, you can log in, update your Will, and print a new copy to sign.
• Every step of our wizards has its own help, and our help and information 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 jargon.  We have designed this service around the needs of the people who use it.
• The Keyholder® Advantage. Your Keyholders, who can each have a free digital wallet card for their phone, get a simple and secure way to reach the documents and information you choose to share with them, when the time comes. For more information, read about the Keyholder® Advantage.
• We have a strong focus on protecting the privacy and security of your information.  We use industry-standard encryption to protect your private information, and the design of LegalWills.ca lets you decide who can see the contents of your Will, and when.
• You can even have your final document checked over for internal consistency and ambiguous wording by a qualified legal professional. The reviewer works from the document alone and does not know your personal circumstances, so the comments are not legal advice. This review is not available to Ontario residents.

Don't take our word for it. Try it out for yourself.  We have worked with lawyers in Canada to bring you the MyWill™ service and to make sure that it is of high 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 LegalWills.ca MyWill™ service. Then decide.