Does she have a safe deposit box?
I charge $450 + tax for a simple will, affidavit of execution, and solicitor’s capacity assessment. If it is not simple, then $250 per hour for as long as it takes. My fees are typical for where I practice, which is at the back end of nowhere (we had a cougar, an injured bear, and a lynx wandering about town last week, we’re a seventeen hour drive from the provincial capital, and we’re an eight hour drive to the next regional sized city in our country). Fees are substantially higher in the major cities.
I also discount document packages. For example, I charge a spousal couple / husband and wife getting two simple mutual wills, two mutual Property POAs and two mutual personal care $850 tax, rather than the $1,900 + tax that I would charge if I were doing each document separately.
What it comes down to is that preparing wills is not a profit centre. The value in it for me is (1) it makes a well needed relaxing break from chewing on litigants’ shins, (2) it is terrific for developing word-of-mouth goodwill, which is very important for me because most of my litigation clients (mostly family and estates, with a bit of construction law just for shits and giggles) are referrals from other lawyers, from satisfied clients, and from socializing. For a given amount of time, I can satisfy more wills clients than litigation clients, so although the money is no great shakes, from an advertising point of view, preparing wills makes a lot of sense.
For the simple capacity assessment, I cover the same sort of stuff, including their knowledge of their finances and their recognition of their moral obligations. The less conventional their decisions, the deeper the assessment.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the relatively low cost of wills in the USA might be related to the relatively high number of lawyers. From what my friends in the USA have been telling me, there’s a bit of a glut at the moment for many types of practices, and that good law schools have had difficulty lining up decent jobs for many of the graduates in the last three years.
The legal market in my area is horrible right now. I lost my job with a non-profit last fall due to budget cuts, and have been looking for work ever since, with no luck. I’m picking some some part time work through a friend of mine, and a few GAL cases by court appointment. Thinking about abandoning the job search and focusing on hanging my own shingle, or maybe going in as a partner with my friend, but these are hard times for lawyers.
The biggest, fancy-ass insurance defense firm in town has laid off staff and are now doing lowly collection work for payday lenders. Two years ago, those guys wouldn’t even walk on the same side of the street as people that did that kind of work.
That’s very unfortunate. You have my best wishes.
As far as hanging out one’s own shingle goes, its a business, so like any new small business, it is a lot of work, and there is no safety net. That being said, I have found it to be a blast! One hell of a lot of fun. One thing I would suggest to anyone about to go it on their own would be to speak to other well established lawyers in town and arrange for them to send the occasional referral, so as to have some work coming in the door while the practice builds, and to always help junior lawyers whenever possible, for aside from it being the decent thing to do, they are the ones who will be referring the big files until they are ready for that level of work.
The lawyer who did this for you should have made some sort of an effort to obtain any prior POAs she may have, as well as the will and any other end of life documents, just to be thorough. If so, then he should have these on file, or at least know the name of the lawyer who prepared them.
If your lawyer didn’t try and find these documents before preparing your POA, it was sloppy of him to say the least, and to say that he owes you a favor would be an understatement. Don’t be afraid to call him out on this.
Also, even if it turns out that the Bar Association in your particular jurisdiction does not officially allow the so-called “broadcast” emails that Muffin refers to, my WAG is that a similar inquiry made by a respected local attorney (as opposed to you/your wife contacting the Bar Association directly) might bear some fruit.
Interesting. Up my way I (or more correctly the client) rip them up and dispose of them.
When I contest a will I love to get my hands on an earlier will, for that combined with a credible indication of undue influence gets my foot in the door to ask that the the current will be tossed in favour of the older will.
The flip side of the coin is that when making a new will, I advise the client to destroy all previous wills, so that there will be less to go on for someone contesting the new will. Thus the execution of a new will is usually immediately followed with the shredding of the old will and its copies by the client before he or she leaves my office.