With our first trip to Mexico sans kids in our near future, completing a will became a top priority.

As regular readers know, the family’s been will-less for years and I’ve written multiple times in the paper and on this blog about the struggle to decide whether we should do it ourselves or find money in our budget to pay a professional.

The topic has struck a nerve with readers– from lawyers who are convinced that only they can write a workable will to lawyers who say software is fine for simple situations like mine.

I’ve had readers tell me about community ed will-making classes and even learned about some lawyers who are trying to grow their business through will-signing parties.

After lots of research and thought (we switched our guardian, changed trustees, debated the proper age for which to let our kids at the money), I completed a will using Quicken WillMaker software last weekend. This weekend we met some friends of ours at a local bank and had it notarized for free. Then we all went out for pizza. The tab? $34.99 for the software and $31.89 for the meal.

I have to say I feel like that cliched weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I am confident that if something does happen to us, the will will convey our wishes. Maybe it’s not perfect, but we notarized the darn thing in front of two witnesses and I can’t imagine any judge would deny our simple requests of who gets the kids and when they get the money. Hopefully our loved ones will never find out.

Gee, now that I have a will, what will I write about on slow news days?!! Here’s to laying this topic to rest.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:44 am and is filed under Kara\'s finances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.