We understand that everyone can tell you why you should get their product, but at Really Good Wills, we aren’t interested in selling you our product if it isn’t the right fit for you. In fact, that is why we have all potential customers take our Free Will Assessment, because there are some situations for which we don’t think we offer the right fit.

1. Second Marriage/Not all Children Common to both spouses: If you are in a second marriage where there are children from prior relationships Really Good Wills is not the right fit for you. You need to hire an attorney that can customize the estate plan to your specific situation. Having done a number of these plans myself, I know first hand the complexity that second marriage can introduce, and to be honest a lot of it may not even be recognizable to you, but it is complex, and you will be better off with a trust based plan.
2. Children with Special Needs or Drug History/Money Management Struggles: If you have a child with special needs or any kind of drug/money management struggle. Estate planning has some really awesome levers that you can pull if you have a child in one of these situations, so that you can ensure that money gets to that child safely and well. Our Really Good Wills do have a section in them devoted to each of these scenarios, but they are built for the what ifs, and if you already have a known situation that falls into one of these two categories, I would still recommend that you work one on one with a good estate attorney to plan for these situations rather than relying on the what if provisions in our document.
3. You Own Real Property (i.e. land/house) in another state than Utah: This is a bit of a gray area as each state has a different threshold for what they allow to be passed on without requiring a probate, but in the simplest terms, when you have a will, your will has to be probated after you die. If you have property in more than one state, generally speaking, a probate will have to be filed in every state that you have property. This can get really expensive really quick. In these situations, I would almost always recommend a trust instead of a will because of the expense of doing probates in multiple states. However, if you don’t anticipate that you’ll have property in multiple states long-term, a Really Good Will might still be a good option for you.
4. If you anticipate that you will be moving to other states: Signing your will electronically is very new in the land of law. Only a handful of states have allowed for this. Most still require that Wills be signed by hand. Utah has the most useable law of all of the states that have implemented electronic will signing laws There has been some concern expressed as to whether or not other states that have not yet adopted electronic will signing laws will honor an electronically signed will. Now, there is a lot of precedent to suggest that they kinda have to (see: Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution), but it’s another gray area, and that means that you may not want to do a Really Good Will if you are anticipating a move to another state in the near future.
5. If you live outside of Utah: Piggybacking then on the prior reason mentioned, if you are not currently residing in Utah, a Really Good Will isn’t the right product for you. Even if you live in one of the 10 states (Nevada, Indiana, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Colorado, Utah, North Dakota, and Washington) where electronic wills are accepted, each state’s laws vary so much from each other that we couldn’t guarantee a Really Good Will is the right fit for you as it is only structured for Utah’s laws at the present time. Our hope is that in time, and as some of these state’s laws are made more useable, like Utah’s, we will be able to offer Really Good Wills in those jurisdictions as well.
6. Not "if" but "when". The last situation in which I think it may be smarter to do revocable trust based estate planning rather than a Really Good Will is if your death is not longer a “what if situation” but has moved to the stage of being a “not if, but when”. A revocable trust is a great planning vehicle, but it requires maintenance that a will does not. When you are in the stage of life where you are primarily doing estate planning to cover “what if” situations, my personal opinion is that a Really Good Will is better because it costs less upfront but still offers you the solutions you need to address the worries you have. Revocable trusts will have to be changed over time. They will need you to continually correctly title assets in them in order to get the benefits that make trusts superior to a will in the first place, and if this maintenance/homework isn’t done, then you will end up spending more upfront for a revocable trust and still having the cost of a probate on the backend, which is the whole thing that you are trying to avoid with a revocable trust in the first place. My experience is that often you end up spending much more money on keeping revocable trusts current and assets correctly titled in them than you receive in terms of benefits from a trust when you are still in the “What IF” stage of life. If you have instead, come to the stage of life when dying is imminent, a revocable trust may be a better option as it can save you the cost of probate if everything is structured and titled correctly. But when you likely have upwards of 10, 20, 30 years or more before you die (barring some unlikely scenario), when moves to other houses are anticipated and the acquisition of further assets is expected, it just becomes complicated (and expensive) to keep all of that organized into your revocable trust so that you enjoy the benefit of the revocable trust you thought you were getting in the first place. **