Legal fees for wills?-Update!

[molly]

We need to update our wills. We prefer to use someone local (High River or Okotoks...) and I am wondering if anyone has had this done lately and how much did it cost? I assume there is a break if a married couple has both drawn up at once...

[avb3]

Originally Posted by molly

We need to update our wills. We prefer to use someone local (High River or Okotoks...) and I am wondering if anyone has had this done lately and how much did it cost? I assume there is a break if a married couple has both drawn up at once...

Usually free or low cost. Lawyers make their money on the probate side of things.

[molly]

Free??!! The cheapest I've seen so far is $750.00!

[Rocky7]

Stuff that is free is usually worth about what you paid for it.

$750 sounds a tad high, though.

[joeya]

I think we got ours for free, as he did it at the same time as when we sold a house, it was covered off in those fees. But when we updated the will with our child, it cost about $200, that was in 2011 I believe.

[CaberTosser]

I think ours were around $800. I think there's at least two lawyers on AO; their names however escape me (I'm not throwing out my guesses in case of error)

Make sure to cover things such as custody of your kids (if any), power of attorney, a living will, do not resuscitate preferences, in addition to whom you wanna leave your Royal Doulton china to. Also pick a person to act as executor in the event of both your demise; think of someone with the best management talents and trustworthiness you know, and ask if they'd be interested instead of dropping a surprise burden upon them.

[jackrabbit000]

Cost me $250 to update mine. Can't remember what it cost me initially. You don't anything for free from a lawyer.

[smithy]

Originally Posted by avb3

Usually free or low cost. Lawyers make their money on the probate side of things.

There is a time when that used to be accurate. Lawyers used to prepare wills as a loss leader and keep the executed document in their offices. When someone passed, the family would usually come back to the office for the probate. This is no longer the case as most people take their Wills with them for their own safekeeping and families are spread apart. Many lawyers prefer not to hold onto the will.

It is not uncommon to pay between $350 and $500 for a will for a single person at a small, general practice firm. If there is a spouse and the wills are "mirror" wills then the cost may be a couple of hundred more. Many lawyers don't like doing codicils to the will (amendments to original) as it invites room for error. They will encourage you to create a new will instead of trying to update an old one.

If your lawyer has your best iterest in mind s/he should be trying to minimize or eliminate the need for probate. This is all par for the course in proper estate planning. As has been mentioned already, the EPA and health care directive should be of much greater personal concern to the client.

[Gunner22a]

For everything that Drewsky mentions above at the legal firm in Onoway. I'm military and both the lawyers there used to be so I trust them and they get all my business and referals.

[JohninAB]

Mine as Drewski outlined was 275 in 2010 but was done by my lawyer after he did my divorce plus mine was pretty straight forward.