Last week, I spoke with a potential client who said, “This all sounds great, but my friend told me she got a trust done for half the price somewhere else.”
I hear this often—and I understand the concern. No one wants to overpay for legal services. But after years of helping families, I’ve learned one consistent truth: when it comes to estate planning, the cheapest option often becomes the most expensive mistake.
Let me explain why.
You’re Not Comparing the Same Thing
When someone offers a trust or will for a fraction of the cost, they’re not wrong about the price—if all you think you need is a set of documents. You can absolutely find:
- Low-fee attorneys who draft basic templates
- Online will-makers
- Downloadable forms
- Even AI-generated documents for free
But here’s the catch: you’re not comparing the same service.
It’s like hiring the lowest bidder to fix a leaky roof. It may look fine at first, but the next storm reveals the truth. Water pours in, drywall buckles, mold spreads, and the “cheap fix” becomes a nightmare of repairs.
Estate planning works the same way—except the storm doesn’t hit while you’re here to handle it. It hits when you’re incapacitated or gone. And by then, it’s too late. Your loved ones are left with an outdated, incomplete, or poorly constructed plan they can’t rely on.
This is how families lose generational wealth… or end up with generational stress.
What a Cheap Plan Really Gives You
Here’s what most bargain plans include—and more importantly, what they leave out:
- Template documents, not a true planNames and basic wishes get filled into a generic form that’s not tailored to your family dynamics, assets, or the real-world scenarios your loved ones may face.
- No follow-through on your assetsMost low-cost plans do not:
- retitle your assets
- update beneficiary designations
- ensure everything aligns with your wishes
- track your assets over time
If these pieces aren’t aligned, the plan simply won’t work.
- No real plan for minor childrenEven if a will lists guardians, cheap plans rarely address the immediate, practical, legal issues that arise if something happens to you—especially the risk of children being cared for by strangers, even temporarily. (If you want to understand this more deeply, ask me for a free copy of Wear Clean Underwear.)
- You don’t understand your choicesMany people sign documents without fully knowing what they say. With low-cost planning, attorneys often don’t have the time—or the process—to explain the implications of key decisions like asset protection, trust structures, or incapacity planning.
- A one-time transactionOnce the documents are signed, the relationship ends. Life changes, laws change, assets change—but the plan stays the same. If your plan doesn’t reflect your life at the time of your disability or death, it fails.
- No support for your loved onesYour family is left to figure everything out alone—during grief, stress, and overwhelm. They pay with time, money, energy, and emotional strain.
- Missing the most important part: your legacyYour loved ones will wish you had left more than instructions. They’ll wish for messages, values, stories, guidance—things no template document captures.
What Makes Life & Legacy Planning Different
Our Life & Legacy Planning® process is designed to ensure your plan actually works when your loved ones need it. It includes:
- Customized planning based on your family, assets, and priorities
- Ongoing support and updates as your life evolves
- Proper titling and coordination of your assets
- Thoughtful planning for minor or dependent children
- A relationship—not a transaction
- The passing on of your values, stories, and voice
- Protection against the most common plan-failures families experience
It’s not “documents.”
It’s a system.
It’s your legacy.
And it’s designed to work when life happens.
“Can I just start cheap and upgrade later?”
If you’d like to start with the simplest and least expensive option that still includes follow-through, support, and proactive review, we can absolutely do that. You’ll be in the Life & Legacy system from day one, and we can build from there over time.
Just remember: we don’t know when the storm is coming.
Legacy isn’t created after we’re gone. It’s created in the choices we make now.
If you die with an incomplete or cheap plan, your family doesn’t get a do-over. They inherit avoidable chaos at the hardest moment of their lives.
Your Next Step
When comparing prices, compare outcomes, not just numbers. Ask yourself:
“What will this cost my loved ones later if it fails?”
At Tyre Law Group PC, we help you create a comprehensive Life & Legacy Plan that is:
- customized
- legally sound
- kept up to date
- coordinated with your assets
- understood by you and your family
- designed to work when needed most
Schedule your 15-minute discovery call here, and let’s create a plan that brings true peace of mind—and stands strong for the people you love most.