Like you, I’ve seen the ads for online wills and other estate planning documents. Watching them, I find myself asking the same questions you probably ask: What does hiring an attorney actually add to drafting these documents? Is it really fine to use one of these services instead of consulting an attorney?

The truth is, after practicing elder law for over twenty-six years and administering hundreds of estates, I’ve seen far too many mistakes, and there’s no single pattern to them. I’ve also met with countless potential clients who wanted to include language in their documents that was wholly inappropriate and that I knew would cause tremendous problems for their families down the road.

For twenty-six years, six or seven days a week, I have thought about elder law in the state of New Jersey. I have to remind myself that what feels like second nature to me may not feel common at all to someone who hasn’t spent the last twenty-six years doing this work. In the law, experience matters. That’s why they call it “practicing” law: experience is what teaches you.

Here’s the bottom line. When I watch those commercials and think about what my clients get that a fill-in-the-blank computer form doesn’t offer, it comes down to one thing: experience. The ability to catch issues and correct them before they become real problems. Most of my clients don’t even realize that’s what I’m doing for them. I take what they tell me and draft it in a way that avoids the problems I know to watch for.

I am sure that for some people, online documents work out fine. But for others, they don’t. And the hard truth is that most people won’t know which category they fall into until it’s already too late for them to fix the issue. By their very nature, these documents only matter once you’re incapacitated or deceased.

I’ve Seen Where This Goes Wrong

I have sat across from families dealing with the aftermath of documents that looked fine on paper. A power of attorney drafted too narrowly to help when a parent needed long-term care. A Will that didn’t account for a blended family and unintentionally disinherited children, or one that was signed incorrectly. A healthcare directive that named co-agents who now disagree on the proper course of care for their parent.

These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re the calls I get after the fact, when fixing the problem is far more expensive, emotionally and financially, than getting it right the first time.

For most clients, I prepare a complete set of core planning documents: your last will and testament, financial power of attorney, and advance health care directive for $850. That price reflects:

• A 26-year focus on elder law, not a general practice that treats estate planning as an afterthought
• Hundreds of estates administered, giving me firsthand knowledge of what actually holds up
• Documents coordinated with each other and your broader financial picture, not filled in isolation
• New Jersey-specific drafting, executed correctly the first time
• A conversation, not just a form. Your situation is not generic, even when your goals are simple

The Real Cost of “Cheap and Easy”

An online service isn’t free, and it’s a bet that your situation is simple enough that generic documents won’t matter, and that you’ll execute them perfectly without anyone checking your work. For some people, that bet pays off. For others, the family doesn’t find out it didn’t until someone is gone or incapacitated, and it’s too late to fix.

Like most TV ads, the solution sounds simple and cheap, but the problems online documents create could be anything but. The cost of hiring most elder law attorneys is quite reasonable and well worth the modest additional cost for the peace of mind an experienced attorney provides.