Your legacy deserves better than a free template

Every few months a new free will template does the rounds. Download it, fill in the blanks, tick the box marked "sorted". I understand the appeal. Estate planning feels like admin, and admin is exactly the sort of thing we all want to make disappear for nothing.

The problem is that a will isn't really a document. It's a set of decisions. And a template can't ask you the questions that matter.

The questions a template never asks

Who actually depends on you, and what happens to them if the order of events isn't the one you assumed? What about the business, the second property, the child from a first marriage, the relative who can't manage money? A template treats every life as if it were the same shape. Yours isn't.

Proper advice comes first. Everything else is just paperwork.

When a home-made will goes wrong, it goes wrong at the worst possible moment: after you're gone, when nobody can ask you what you meant. The people left behind inherit the ambiguity along with everything else.

What advice-first actually means

It means sitting down and understanding your life before anyone reaches for a form. It means telling you the truth, even when the truth is that you need less than you feared, or something different from what you came in asking for. I'm not a salesman, so I've no reason to talk you into anything.

A free template isn't free. It just moves the cost somewhere you can't see it yet, and hands the bill to the people you most wanted to protect. Your legacy is worth a proper conversation.