The Kitchen Table Estate: Why I Drafted the Same Will Twice and What I Learned About DIY Legal Software

I found my father at the kitchen table one Sunday morning in 2023, and the silence that followed was heavier than the stack of disorganized paperwork he left behind. He had died in his sleep the night before, right where he usually did the crossword. Since then, my life has been a series of manila folders and software downloads.

Quick disclosure before you read: every will-software, legal-form, and tax-prep link below pays me a referral fee when a reader subscribes through it. Your price stays the same as going direct. My household ran all three tools through real paperwork between 2023 and 2026 — the referral income funds buying the next platform to print-test, which is the only way these reviews stay current.

The Reference Librarian’s Archive

Being a reference librarian means I don’t like messy data. When the initial shock of Dad’s passing faded, I looked at Mom’s filing cabinet like a backlog of uncataloged books. It was a disaster. I spent the next few years rebuilding her files, drafting her will, and eventually helping my brother do the same. I quickly learned that while you can pay an attorney a few hundred dollars an hour to format a document, you can also do it at your own kitchen table with the right software. I am not a lawyer or a paralegal. I am just someone who got tired of high hourly quotes for things that felt like they should be in the library’s reference stack.

During this process, I tested WillMaker and LawDepot side-by-side. I wanted to see if the subscription-based form library of LawDepot could really compete with the specialized estate focus of WillMaker. I even had to navigate tax season using E-file.com after Dad’s long-time CPA retired, which added another layer of digital paperwork to the pile.

Drafting the Same Will Twice

Late last February, I decided to run an experiment. I had already finished my own will using WillMaker, but I wanted to see if I could replicate it in LawDepot. I sat down with my laptop, a lukewarm cup of coffee, and my notes on Indiana’s specific rules. In Indiana, you need two witnesses for a will to be valid, but you don’t strictly need a notary unless you want a self-proving clause. Also, Indiana is one of the states that does not recognize a holographic will — that is a fancy way of saying a handwritten note on the back of a Trader Joe’s receipt won’t hold up in probate.

The first thing I noticed was the depth. WillMaker is designed for one job: estate planning. It covers 49 states — basically everything except Louisiana, which follows a different civil law system. The WillMaker package includes about 35 documents, including things like a letter to survivors and a beneficiary worksheet. That worksheet is essentially a hold queue for your assets; it caught the fact that I hadn’t named a backup for my brother before I’d even finished the main draft.

LawDepot felt different. It is a massive library of 400 forms. It is great for random tasks, like when I needed a rental agreement for the tenant in Mom’s basement or a contractor agreement for the kitchen renovation we did in early April. But when I tried to draft a will, it felt thin. While WillMaker uses a smart, interview-style branching logic that hides questions you don’t need to answer, LawDepot required much more manual data entry for common assets. I felt like I was doing the data entry twice just to make sure the software understood which bank account went where.

Why WillMaker Won the Kitchen Table Test

The measurable tradeoff between the two became clear on a rainy Tuesday evening in May. I was trying to update a section about my healthcare proxy. WillMaker’s interface felt like a guided tour through a reference collection. It asks you questions about your life, and then it builds the document around your answers. It naturally leads you to choosing a health care proxy without making you feel like you’re filling out a tax form.

In contrast, LawDepot’s will template felt like a skeleton. It gives you the basics, but you have to know exactly what you want to say. If you have a simple situation — maybe one kid and one bank account — LawDepot is fine. But for a household with a house, a retirement account, and specific heirlooms, the WillMaker logic is worth the extra time. It ensures you don’t miss the small stuff, like the self-proving affidavit that saves your kids from having to drag witnesses into a court hearing years from now.

One frustration with WillMaker: it is desktop-install software. When my laptop battery died mid-edit during that May rainstorm, I lost about twenty minutes of work. It doesn’t have the real-time cloud sync that LawDepot offers. However, the result was a document that felt much more robust and tailored to Indiana’s specific statutes.

When LawDepot is the Right Tool

I still keep my LawDepot subscription active, but not for the will. I used it to pull a HIPAA authorization form when Mom’s doctor started getting picky about who could see her labs. You can learn how to create a HIPAA authorization form pretty easily there. It is also where I go for the one-off forms that don’t warrant a $100 software purchase. If you need a quick document to cover a home repair or a roommate agreement, LawDepot’s 400 forms are a lifesaver. It is like the 'New Books' shelf at the library — it has a little bit of everything, but it might not have the deep-dive history you need for a major project.

The April Tax Crunch

By early April, I realized that Dad’s death meant his retired CPA wasn’t coming back to help with the final filings. Tax season suddenly fell on me. Because our household Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) was under the 100,000 threshold for the basic tier, I tried E-file.com. I was terrified of re-typing everything from Dad’s old paper returns, but E-file let me import a PDF of the previous 1040. It picked up about 80% of the line items automatically. It saved me from rage-printing the same form three times because I’d missed a decimal point. You can even use it if you have a small business or a side hustle; I’ve looked into how to file taxes for a side hustle there for my own peace of mind.

The Final Verdict at the Bank

Standing at the bank in mid-summer with a WillMaker document in hand, I felt a strange sense of relief. The teller looked at the Indiana self-proving clause and got a little confused because she hadn’t seen the 'no-notary' version before. I had to explain it twice, but the document held up. It was legal, it was thorough, and it was done.

If you are looking for a comprehensive estate plan, WillMaker is the clear winner for the depth of its 35-document package. If you just need a quick form for a tenant or a contractor, LawDepot is a great tool to have in your back pocket. Just remember that I am not a lawyer. If your estate is over $500,000, if you have a blended family, or if you have a beneficiary with special needs, please take your draft to a professional for a review. These tools are meant to help you organize the kitchen table, not replace the courtroom entirely.

Securing your family's future doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars in legal fees. Whether you need the deep-dive state-specific templates of WillMaker or the broad form library of LawDepot, starting now is better than leaving a mess for someone else to clean up later.