Estate planning and writing wills have been things I enjoy ever since my first doctrinal class in law school. I don't get to write wills often enough, but when I get a client that needs one I am more than happy to put together a custom plan to fit his or her needs.
The one thing that clients are always surprised about, however, is that we don't make copies of our clients' wills prior to or after execution. This is not an issue with saving paper; no, this is a principled decision based on our knowledge and expertise. Even though Professor Van Detta would hate me to use example to explain why, I think this case makes better sense by contrasting two different situations.
Scenario 1: You get your will written to your liking and you go to your lawyer's office to execute it. Assuming all goes well at execution, you leave the office with a single original copy of your will. At least in Georgia, you can take your will to your probate court for safe keeping, or you can put it anywhere else you know things will be safe. As the years go by, maybe you make little scribbles on your will and maybe you don't, but either way when it comes time to probate the will the judge will understand your intentions because there is no contradictory document. Done, and all goes as you might want it to.
Scenario 2: Once your will is written properly, your lawyer either makes multiple originals to execute or after execution, he makes multiple copies to give out to your loved ones. Don't get me started on why you should never execute multiple wills in the first place... So instead of leaving with one single original copy, you may leave with three or five. Because you have multiple copies, human nature sets in and you take less care to put one away for safety. At some point maybe you decide to change your will, so you make scribbles on the one that you kept. Maybe you can't find your copy, so you call your daughter and ask for hers so that you can make changes. Big problem, however, is that if you died right then, the probate court would have to sift through contradictory versions of your will. And based on which changes were made, your beneficiaries now have a legal battle on their hands that you could have avoided. And the typical owner of a will wants to make some change in their lifetime.
I am not in the business of refusing to perform tasks requested by my clients, but making copies of their will is something I do not do for this reason. I have seen all too often that, after a person dies, their family has to deal with litigation because there were multiple wills with different language. While you might not care too much (because you'd be dead) you should at least consider the heirs you love and want to provide for. Why create a hassle when it could be so easily avoided? So when clients ask me for copies of their will, I tell them no, recount these stories, and let them make their own decision when they leave.
Best,
JD
John D. Duncan is president of J.D. Duncan, PC, founding partner of Prater, Duncan & Craig, LLC in Newnan, Georgia, and is Esquire by Day. You can find him at www.jdduncanlaw.com, or follow him on twitter and Facebook.
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