I'm going to tell you first off that I make a lot more money on estates where there is a do-it-yourself will than on estates where an attorney has drafted the will. Unfortunately, it's very hard to get a do-it-yourself will right in Florida. We see wills that aren't signed, or the affidavit portion is signed, but the will part is not signed. Or, the notary signs as one of the witnesses, which you're not supposed to do. Or we had a doozy last week where the notary, not knowing any better, printed the names of the witnesses where the witnesses were supposed to sign. So there's about nine or ten ways that you can mess up a do-it-yourself will, just in signing it incorrectly. And that formality can be frustrating, but the reason it's there is it safeguards against fraudulent wills. And the Florida public policy is to make actually setting up your will slightly difficult because it prevents people from making up fake wills. So it's there to protect us.

                    

The second thing is, it's easy to say the wrong thing in a do-it-yourself will. For example, in a Florida will, an attorney would never write, sell my home and divide it among my children. The reason they would never ever write that is because our homesteads have amazing creditor protection until you add the phrase, sell it. So a Florida attorney knows to always say, my home goes to my children equally, and never ever add the phrase, sell it.

                    

So there's a lot of tricks, a lot of things that could go wrong, I recommend always go to an attorney to get your will written.