Q: my sister in law died recently, my husband , her brother and I all had our wills made out by same attorney 17 hears ago.
We went to him after she she died to update our wills & get his advice about how to proceed with the sale of her house. We left all 3 wills with him & he has lost them. Now what do we do?
A:
Sounds like a difficult situation. I'm not sure whether "we left all 3 wills with him" means that you recently took them back to him for revisions and he has already lost them or whether you left all 3 with him 17 years ago (he agreed to keep the originals back when he drafted them) and, in the course of the last 17 years, he has lost them. Either way, if you are representing all the facts, then it is disappointing that the attorney failed to properly hold your documents. I believe that many estate planning attorneys are moving away (have already moved away) from the practice of holding original wills for clients for this very reason (among others).
Somewhat depending on which of the above scenarios is the case, in my opinion, an attorney who realizes that he has lost your three wills should simply offer to prepare you three new wills from scratch at a steeply discounted rate (if not for free). Admittedly, that may be a big sacrifice of his time and lost revenue opportunity costs. That you are asking the question may suggest that he did not offer to do this.
Not to excuse his losing your wills, but since you were wanting to update them anyway, it may be just as well to start from scratch to force you to take a fresh and focused look at all of your assets, your preferences for how they are disposed, your heirs, etc.
If you are going to start fresh (and especially if he isn't offering you a great deal to compensate for his error), you have to ask yourselves whether you'd rather start fresh with a new estate planning attorney who appears organized enough to not lose your stuff.
Whatever you do, don't let this hiccup prevent you from following through with your intentions to prepare an updated estate plan.
Best,
Ashley
https://powellplanning.com/estate-planning
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