Houston Probate & Estate Administration Law Blog

We live in a DIY world, so it's only natural to consider the pros and cons of tackling estate planning without professional help.

While this option is available to you, there are several reasons why you should think twice before going down this path:

• You don't know what you want or need: There are tools that can help you create estate planning documents, but that doesn't mean you know which ones you need.
• You don't know the law: There are both state and federal estate planning laws. If you don't understand these, you could make a decision that costs you time and money. It could also make life more difficult for your loved ones upon your death.
• There's no one to answer your questions: You think you know what you want to accomplish, but then you find yourself in the middle of the process and facing a variety of questions. At this point, you begin to search online for answers. And while you may find some information, you never know if it's accurate and/or pertains to your specific situation.

When creating an estate plan, you hope that everything goes as planned, but you know that you're likely to face challenges.

Fortunately, there's nothing you can't overcome with the right approach and some guidance.

When it comes to your estate plan, you never want to find that you made a mistake. The only good part of pinpointing a mistake is that it puts you in a position to fix it before it causes harm in the future.

People make estate planning mistakes for a variety of reasons, including the following:

• Fear: For example, if you're scared to create an estate plan because you don't want to face the future, it could cause you to make the mistake of skipping your estate plans entirely.
• Misinformed: You think you understand the ins and outs of estate planning, which points you toward tackling the process on your own. However, if you don't truly know what you're doing, you could make a mistake.
• Lack of guidance: This goes along with misinformation. You need professional guidance during the estate planning process, as it'll keep you on track and give you confidence that you're making the right decisions.

There are many types of professionals that are considered to be fiduciaries, including attorneys, real estate agents or brokers, accountants, business advisers, bankers and financial advisers. Then there are others such as trustees and executors that don't necessarily have to be trained professionals like the others described above. They can be asked to assume fiduciary duties for another person. There are lots of responsibilities associated with acting as a fiduciary for someone else.

Fiduciaries have a legal obligation to be both trustworthy and honest in representing someone. Any number of individuals described above can be brought in to serve as fiduciaries either before or after a person's death. The person acting as a fiduciary must act in the best interest of the individual they're representing.