About $1000 in northern Atlanta suburbs, including power of attorney and health care directive. This from a firm that specializes in Elder Law, wills and estates.
My observations based on my mother-in-law’s experience: they know what questions to ask. For example, tax implications (example: sell a rental property now vs after her death). They are well-tuned to the nuances, both in the person’s wishes as well as the law and the practicalities.
This also extended to the health care directive; granted, it was largely initially driven by an automated Q and A system, but it was very detailed and provided many scenarios, something a form fill-in wouldn’t usually do.
Finally, as one who had experience serving as an administrator for a family estate, there is one BIG advantage of having a will created locally at a law firm: upon my passing, my family doesn’t need to fret with the process and uncertainty about the process; they simply contact that law office and engage their guidance, which could range from just filing forms all the way to administration, depending on my family’s willingness and ability to do it themselves.
One thing to keep in mind if you let the kids decide how to split things up is that can often lead to conflicts. There’s a lot of things that can change between now and then. Even if they get along great today, that may not be the case decades from now. Their financial situations may be greatly different. If one child ends up doing a lot of elder care, they may feel they deserve more than the others. Their spouses may even have ideas about how things should be split and they may strongly let their feelings be known. Lots of stuff like that can complicate how things get split. To avoid conflicts, it may be best to go with a simple, even split of the assets. For heirlooms or things with emotional connections, you could do something where they pick things one at a time, like this:
Some employers offer access to legal services as part of their employee benefits. It may be an optional coverage option that you have to sign up for with a small, monthly fee. If so, then you can have a lawyer do your will for no additional cost. You may have to wait until next year, since you’ll have to add the benefit during the coverage sign up period.
My niece is a lawyer but she doesn’t do wills – she’s in a completely different area of practice. When I asked her advice she recommended an online kit that was inexpensive and that she said she’d used herself. I haven’t done anything about it yet but since in my case the will would be very simple I’m sure that’s all I need. I’ll just ask her to double-check that everything’s been done properly. It surely could not cost much to just get a lawyer to look over what you’ve done and make sure there wouldn’t be any issues with it.
This problem is called “commorientes” in law. English law has a statutory fiction that in such situations, the people involved are deemed to have died in descending order of age, which can lead to very unfair results. But as always in law, the result can differ by jurisdiction.
Ask to the OP: Will drafting is a standard service provided by lawyers, and it’s usually not very expensive.
That is true. But dividing things up in a will can lead to conflicts as well. It is truly amazing what assholes relatives can become when dividing even a relatively small estate. So I wouldn’t think I could completely forestall such events other than by making my expectations clear, making my estate as simple as possible, and appointing as executor the most reasonable of your kids.
The OP’s main practical concerns are:
how to transfer the house - so the kids enjoy the stepped up value;
how to transfer the cars (people forge dead peoples’ signatures on car titles all the time);
and any cash/investments - which can generally be done by naming beneficiaries and PoD.
The house is the most challenging one - but even through probate without a will, (IN MOST STATES) if held jointly it will go to the surviving spouse after the first spouse dies, and then to the kids per stirpes. Don’t do something stupid like putting one kid on the title or anything.
That leaves personalty. If you want to make sure kid #1 gets grandma’s old necklace, why don’t you give it to her now until waiting til you die?
Other folk have mentioned living wills, PoA, etc. In Illinois, much of the required language is statutory, so those could be drawn up pretty well by oneself. Lawyers often provide those in conjunction with a will - at nominal additional cost. They are quite pro forma.
I was very happy how my sisters and I handled things after my parents died 1 mo apart without a will. They had a list of some jewelry and stuff to go to each of us - which we respected. Then we met at their apartment, drew numbers from 1-4 and just went from 1 to 4 and back again picking whatever we wanted most. Each of us was guaranteed at LEST the thing we wanted 4th best - and in actuality, much higher than that as we wanted different things. And face it - how much of your crap are your kids going to want?
One thing we have done is draw up a list of what we own that has some value. Some jewelry and musical instruments that are worth reselling rather than going to Goodwill. Just to help the kids out.
Then there was my wife’s family. After her dad died, the estranged sister was named to administer the life insurance policy - and stole $20k from the other 2 sisters. People can be such assholes. But, like I said above - why do you care? You’ll be dead.
Well, as I said up above, I’m optimistic that the kids will be able to deal with things in a mutually agreeable manner with no significant hiccups. I’m pretty sure they’ll make their best good-faith effort. But yeah, there are no guarantees when it comes to human behavior. I do want it to be as easy for them as possible, though.
I like the idea of taking turns picking things. As others have noted above, I doubt there’s much of our crap they’d really want. The only likely thing I can think of, of mine, is that the youngest will probably want my Kurt Vonnegut books, but the others won’t care about that. If they want computers, I have several laptops of recent vintage they can deal out among themselves like cards. If I stick around long enough that the current collection becomes obsolete, there’ll probably be newer ones. I use 'em for work and make sure I always have backup machines ready to go. My wife has some stuff the girls might want.
One big issue is handling the stuff no one wants, especially the stuff no one wants but people vaguely wish would stay in the family (grandma’s China; 27 binders of vacation photos). I know i fervently wish my parents would start tossing or selling stuff now, and i also know that in the fulness of time, its a job that wil fall on me. Its even worse if there’s stuff that’s worth a little money. Like, yes, grandpa’s antique lures are each worth $5-50, and all together, they are worth too much to just throw out, but at the same time, no one has the time to sell them individually and a dealer will give pennies.
Its not so much asking your kids what they want as it is asking them who can and will dedicate all this time to figuring it all out. It males me tired just thinking about it in relationship to my parents. One more reason i need them to live until I, myself, can retire.
My late spouse had a number of items of this sort. I hired a broker/estate sale/eBay store guy to help me with it. Whether or not this would help you I don’t know.
Im not even talking about me. My point is that cleaning up an estate is a ton of work, and the conversation with heirs is as much about who is going to do what as it is who gets what.
This is why I told my husband to start going through his collectibles and selling them now. He has thousands of baseball cards - no one is going to go through them and get the best price they can for them one by one. They won’t get thrown out but they will probably get sold to a dealer for much less than they are actually worth unless he does it now.
My mother has a houseful of junk, but thankfully none of it is really worth anything. She’s got some drinking glasses from the 70s - I see that pattern in thrift shops all the time at about $2 per glass. It will be a lot of work cleaning her her house out but at least I won’t be worried that anything is valuable.
My dad left me (only child) a decent-size, if not fabulously valuable, coin collection. I just took what I figured would be worth some money to a dealer and asked him to make an offer, and I figured I made out okay. After all, my investment was $0. He had a bunch of proof sets and whatnot.
A lot of the “bulk,” though, was just an accumulation of rolls of coins sorted by year and mint. Like 1973D pennies and such. I made multiple trips lugging those damn things to the bank to deposit them at face value. It was worth the effort, but I’m kinda glad there wasn’t more than there actually was.
I think it is extremely inconsiderate for folk to die with junk for someone else to sort through/dispose of. Sure, some folk die unexpectedly, but a frequent dynamic is for folk to make no effort to winnow down their possessions.
We’ve made a drastic ongoing effort to NOT impose such a burden on our kids - also because we don’t care to be surrounded by piles of crap we don’t need or love.
If you love your kids/expected survivors, organize and dispose.