Hannah Whitmore
Contributor at WillPicks
About
Reference librarian at a suburban Indianapolis branch, 47. Dad died at the kitchen table on a Sunday morning in October 2023. No estate plan anyone could find. The week after the funeral I was at my mom's, going through an accordion folder, looking for the title to a car she needed to sell. Realized she had almost no idea what was in her own financial life. The homeowners policy had lapsed two years earlier. The safe deposit box had no co-signer. The brokerage account still listed her college roommate as beneficiary.
Two and a half years later: my own will is drafted and signed (two witnesses, self-proving affidavit attached, filed in a binder behind the kitchen junk drawer), mom's paperwork is rebuilt, my brother stopped procrastinating last spring. The tools I ended up relying on: WillMaker for the will and healthcare directive, LawDepot for a basement rental agreement and a contractor agreement when we finally redid the kitchen, and E-file.com after dad's CPA retired and the next tax season landed on me without warning.
Not a lawyer. Not a paralegal. Nothing to point to except three years of real paperwork and a strong opinion about software that prints the self-proving clause on the first try. What I know how to do is find information, check it against the source, and explain it at a reference desk without making someone feel dumb for asking.
Written by Hannah Whitmore
- Setting Up a Revocable Living Trust for Your Family Online
- Create a Legal Power of Attorney for Aging Parents Without a Lawyer
- Best Online Will Software for DIY Planning at Your Kitchen Table
- Best Legal Document Software for Beginners Doing Estate Planning
- How to Update Your Widowed Mother's Will Using WillMaker Online
- Filing Your Own Taxes After Your Family CPA Retires This Year
- Best Way to Organize Legal Documents After a Parent Passes Away
- Creating a Simple Rental Agreement for a Basement Tenant with LawDepot
- The Kitchen Table Attorney: What Three Years of DIY'ing Wills After Dad Died Taught a Librarian
Disclosure
Some links on this site pay me a referral fee when you sign up through them. Your price stays the same either way. The fee goes back into buying the next platform to test, which is the only way the comparisons stay current. If a tool printed something wrong for my household, the review says so, paid link or not.