Don’t Make Your Own Will
Lord St. Leonards, in his Handy-Book of Property Law, says: “I am somewhat unwilling to give you any instructions for making your Will, without the assistance of your professional adviser; and I would particularly warn you against the use of printed forms, which have misled many men. They are as dangerous as the country schoolmaster or the vestry-clerk. It is quite shocking to reflect upon the litigation which has been occasioned by men making their own Wills or employing incompetent persons to do so. To save a few guineas in their lifetime, men leave behind them a Will which it may cost hundreds of pounds to have expounded by the courts before the various claimants will desist from litigation. Looking at this as a simple money transaction, lawyers might well be in despair if every man’s Will were prepared by a competent person. To put off making your Will until the hand of death is upon you, evinces either cowardice or a shameful neglect of your temporal concerns. Lest, however, such a moment should arrive, I must arm you in some measure against it.
“If you wish to tie up your property in your family you really must not make your own will. It were better to die without a will, than to make one which will waste your estate in litigation to discover its meaning. The words “children,” “issue,” “heirs of the body,” or “heirs,” sometimes operate to give the parent the entire disposition of the estate, although the testator did not mean any such thing. They are seldom used by a man who makes his own will without leading to a lawsuit. And now an operation has been given to like words by the new statute, which I could not explain to you without you possessed more knowledge of law than I give you credit for. It were useless for me to show how to make a strict settlement of your property, and therefore I will not try. I could, without difficulty, run over the names of many judges and lawyers of note, whose wills made by themselves have been set aside, or construed so as to defeat every intention which they ever had. It is not even a profound knowledge of law which will capacitate a man to make his own will, unless he has been in the habit of making the wills of others. Besides, notwithstanding that fees are purely honorary, yet it is almost proverbial that a lawyer never does anything well for which he is not fee’d. Lord Mansfield told a story of himself, that feeling this influence, he once, when about to attend on some professional business of his own, took several guineas out of his purse and put them into his waistcoat pocket, as a fee for his labour.”