Quicken Lawyer 2003 Wills
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend Help protect your family and property, quickly and easily! Create a legal will, make final arrangements, and access extensive legal information. As an added bonus, included Free on your disc is the Nolo's Encyclopedia of Everyday Law. Get answers to all those questions you couldn't afford to ask!… Product details and pricing info |
|---|
2 Customer Reviews Posted
- This Quicken Product was a little late
- The software provided a sample of what I needed, yet, I found it was obsolete. I was expecting an updated version. I was not able to do what I really needed without ordering and paying for another version. Quite disappointing.
- 2005-09-07, 6 of 6 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Solid and User Friendly, Great for Straightforward Situation
- BOTTOM LINE: Quicken Lawyer Wills (`QLW') is a great, low-cost alternative to hiring a lawyer to prepare your will, which will run you a minimum of several hundred dollars. It takes just minutes to prepare a will, but its legal manual/support resources are extensive enough for those that want to spend much more time understanding the what/why behind their document.
QLW is published by Nolo Press, a well established publisher of self-help legal books. When creating a will, the software creates all of the legal language for you - you do not write a single word of legalese - and docs are tailored to each state's requirements. To get information from you and have you make decisions about the content/structure of your documents, QLW follows the typical "interview" format - easy to use and informative along the way. My wife and I each created wills in literally 20 minutes (but you probably have to put a bit of forethought into it, especially if you are married).
PROS:
- Ease of use: idiot-proof interview format
- Legal help: good offline manual, good resources at Nolo website
- Clear execution information: tells you exactly how to execute the will
- Address book: enter a person's info (i.e. you spouse) and don't need to enter again in other parts of same doc
- Ease of use for married people: prepare one spouse's will and QLW has a function to flip the names to create the other spouse's will without starting from scratchCOMPETITORS: Kiplinger and Broderbund also publish estate planning software but I've had a chance to look at them (pre-installed on my computer when I bought it) and I'd stick with Quicken.
GET A LAWYER IF: While QLW functions well as an advisor, guiding you through the specific provisions within a will, it has its limits and is candid enough to admit it during the interviews/tutorials. Get a lawyer for situations like: you expect to owe federal estate taxes ($1.5 million limit in 2003 and going up rapidly), you own a small business or you expect to have a messy family situation upon death (i.e. an ex-spouse or children that don't get along) or live in a community property state.
THINK ABOUT QUICKEN LAWYER PERSONAL: If you have the sense to prepare a will and are in a life situation to start preparing a will, you probably could stand to have a few other basic estate planning documents like a living will/healthcare directive and a power of attorney (especially if you're married). So for a few bucks more, I might check out Quicken Lawyer Personal instead which will do all of this plus prepare a will for you (see my review of Quicken Lawyer Personal for more info).
- 2003-06-22, 133 of 134 people found this review helpful, Rated:
