Will & Estate Planning

We used www.legacywriter.com and it worked out quite well. Our main objective was to determine guardianship, as well as the executer of the estate. On legacy writer, you fill out all the info, then it prints out the full document in legal terms. Then we all signed and got it notorized. We did both my husband's and mine and I want to say it was around $60 for both, and we got the 5 years to change anything option as well. It's easy, inexpensive because you are not using the time of a lawyer, and legal as it's all notorized, and complete. So there's another option.

Before you meet with a lawyer, make sure that you have a guardian and two co-guardians (in case of guardian's death) chosen and make sure that these people are okay with being chosen as guardians. You also need to figure out who you would like as the executor of your estate. I wish I could recommend a good estate planning lawyer to you, but the one we used did a good job, but recently we have decided to make some changes to our will and my husband has left several messages for him and he is not returning his calls so I wouldn't recommend him. We were referred to him by our financial advisor so if you have a financial advisor, ask him for a referral.

We did this a few months ago, and it relieves me to know it's all written down, just in case something should happen. You wouldn't want the state court system to decide about your family and your personal affairs. We did a will and a power of attorney for health and another power of attorney for financial. You'll need to know who would get custody of your baby, in case both you and your husband should die, and have a backup person. In addition, you should do a power of attorney for if you and your husband are alive, but unable to take care of paying your own bills, etc. Then you need someone to make healthcare decisions for you if you and your husband cannot. The lawyer will tell you what else you need. We used Wiedel, Hudzik, Russ & Phillipp (we used Jim Russ) on Main Street in Downers Grove. My family has used them for years and years. I believe their prices are very resonable. ###-###-####. Good luck.