Quicken Lawyer 2003 Personal

Quicken Lawyer 2003 Personal has several different help features to assist the user in need. There is a guide on the right side of every interview screen to help you as you work through each document. Quicken Lawyer Onscreen, a built-in reference guide, consists of the legal manual and a user's guide. Included is a glossary, which puts all the "legalese" into plain English for the everyday user. Finally, Quicken Lawyer 2003 Personal provides extensive resources and support on the Web for the user who might not find what they are looking for within the program.

Quicken Lawyer 2003 Personal contains many different documents you can produce yourself. Some document titles include: Will, Living Trust-Basic Trust, Healthcare Directive, Durable Power of Attorney for Finances, and Child Care Agreement. New documents in the 2003 version include: Information for Caregivers and Survivors, Notice to Put Name on Do Not Call List, and General Bill of Sale for Personal Property.

It's important to remember that any legal documents must be carefully considered before being relied upon to suit your needs and carry out your wishes. Most of the documents come with a disclaimer stating that if you want advice geared toward your specific situation, you should consult an expert. Still, for home users, Quicken Lawyer 2003 Personal should fulfill many basic legal needs. --Kendra Hayden

Amazon.com Product Description
Quicken Lawyer 2003 Personal combines the newest versions of both WillMaker and Living Trust Maker with other legal tools you can use every day, all in one package. Use Quicken Lawyer to create your own will, living trusts, financial powers of attorney, living wills, child and elder care forms, and documents for your executor. For each document, Quicken Lawyer takes you through a step-by-step interview. Your documents will automatically reflect the laws of your state. The package includes a comprehensive legal manual; expert tech support is also available.

Use Quicken Lawyer 2003 to create a will that provides for family members, children, and charities. Name a personal guardian to care for young children, specify the executor of your estate, select a trusted person to manage property left to young people, and revise and update your will whenever you like. Quicken Lawyer Personal also includes many legal forms for everyday use, including: temporary guardianship authorization for care of a minor, authorization for foreign travel with a minor, authorization for a minor's medical treatment, authorization to drive a motor vehicle, general bill of sale, child care agreement, child care instructions, elder care agreement, and pet care agreement.

So I turned to Quicken Lawyer -- what a difference a software package can make! Each time I wanted a form it took me through a series of questions and answers, and whenever I had a problem or questions I could find answers in the sidebars. Best of all my attorney couldn't find any errors, he just confirmed that I wanted what I was stating in the documents! I can't recommend this package enough. Never has a single purchase seemed so valuable.


Solid, User Friendly, Great for Straightforward Situations   June 2, 2003
66 out of 69 found this review helpful

BOTTOM LINE: Quicken Lawyer Personal ('QLP') is a great, low-cost alternative to hiring a lawyer to prepare your basic estate planning document, which will run you a minimum of several hundred dollars. It takes just minutes to prepare a will, but its legal manual/support resources are extensive enough for those that want to spend much more time understanding the what/why behind their documents.

QLP is published by Nolo Press, a well established publisher of self-help legal books. QLP begins by walking you through a number of typical life-stage situations (i.e. young w/ no kids, married w/ kids, etc.) and comes up with a list of suggested documents and along the way explains why you might need each of these documents. When creating a particular document, the software writes all of the legal language for you - you do not write a single word of legalese - and docs are tailored to each state's requirements. To get information from you and have you make decisions about the content/structure of your documents, QLP follows the typical "interview" format - easy to use and informative along the way. My wife and I each created wills, healthcare directives and powers of attorney in about an hour or two.

PROS:
- Ease of use: idiot-proof interview format
- Legal help: good offline manual, good resources at Nolo website
- Clear execution information: tells you exactly what each document needs to be put into effect (some need notarization, some need just witnesses)
- Address book: enter a person's info (i.e. your spouse) and don't need to enter again in other parts of same doc or other docs

QLP is primarily estate planning software. It has a few of the most important ancillary documents (Child Care Agreement, Limited POA for Finances), but Kiplinger's Home Attorney and Broderbund's Family Attorney have a full complement of general use form documents. However, if you look through these lists, most are either not really necessary (Trip Permission Slip you can write yourself on scrap of paper or school gives it to you) or are better left to professionals unless you know exactly what you are doing (i.e. residential real estate sales contract and home services contract - too much legalese in there to just print, drop your name in and sign!?).

COMPETITORS: As mentioned above, Kiplinger's Home Attorney and Broderbund's Family Attorney have a more extensive list of docs (many of which you'll never need IMHO). Home Attorney came preloaded on my computer so had a chance to try it -- not nearly as user friendly, kind of clunky and actually makes you edit the document to enter your name, county, etc - this scares me. Don't have Family Attorney so can't comment on its ease of use, sorry. If you really need a ton of general use forms, get Home Attorney or Family Attorney - otherwise stick with Quicken.

GET A LAWYER IF: While QLP functions well as an advisor, telling you when you might need certain documents or even specific provisions within documents, it has its limits and is candid enough to admit it during the interviews/tutorials. Get a lawyer for situations like: you expect to owe federal estate taxes ($1.5 million limit in 2003 and going up rapidly), you own a small business or you expect to have a messy family situation upon death (i.e. an ex-spouse or children that don't get along) or live in a community property state.


Great educational product, no substitute for a lawyer though   March 8, 2003
C. Chu
56 out of 58 found this review helpful

I used this product to practice writing up my will, my living trust and estate planning documents. It has very good online help, and explains the terminologies, includes checklists, and answers a lot of legal questions. This product will save you time with a real lawyer (who charges by the hour), in that you don't have to ask the real basic questions, since you've already been tutored. The will generated is perfectly legal, but I would advice using a lawyer for more complicated documents. The checklists and the instructions to give to your executor are great, because you can list all of the details you'd want someone to know about in case you are gone.

As others have stated, there was no promised rebate coupon in the box.


Great product!   October 17, 2002
50 out of 50 found this review helpful

I bought this product and have been *very* happy with it. I was able to do wills for both my wife and I in the matter of an afternoon for less than [$] bucks. I found the interface of the program extremely user friendly and easy to understand. Also, it is loaded with legal info about all kinds of stuff including legal definitions of terms, which I found useful since most legal jargon is unreadable by me. It is just a fantastic product all around.


Easy to use   May 25, 2003
Stella Nemeth (Macungie, PA, USA)
19 out of 22 found this review helpful

I bought this program because a lawyer friend suggested that I go to a web site he liked to find will forms for the simple wills I wanted made up for myself and my husband. That web site suggested this program and the other reviews here made me comfortable with buying the program.

I went through the process to write two wills this morning and it was amazingly simple to do.

You are asked questions, and if you don't know the exact answers you have the ability to go back at a later date to fill in anything you needed to research. The finished will comes with printed instructions on how to go about signing it and getting it witnessed, and why you need to do what you need to do.

This is all very well organized.