Rowan Jordan/Getty Images
The author is not pictured.
My husband was diagnosed with lymphoma four weeks after our son was born, and ever since, the idea of writing a will has been on my "to do someday" list and nagging at me.
I had my own big health scare a few years before that - sarcoma, another cancer - and even though it's unlikely that both of us will die before our son reaches adulthood, I think we may be more aware of our own mortality than most people in their 30s or 40s.
Even though the thought of writing a will was pretty emotionally loaded, by the time our son turned 5 in 2019, I finally realized we had put it off for too long.
Writing our will with Fabric
We decided to try Fabric, a free online service that can help you create a will and find life insurance - it seemed simple and less stressful than seeing a lawyer.
After a quick two-minute quiz, Fabric recommended we start with writing a will. Fabric is targeted to people with young children, though I think just about anyone could benefit from using it.
Protect your family's future by creating a free, legal will online with Fabric »
We started by filling in basic contact information, which took less than a minute. Fabric also instructed us to list our children by name, so I made a mental note to update our will if our wish for another child becomes a reality.
Fabric
We decided to temporarily skip over the question of who would be our son's guardian if both of us died. That was going to have to wait to be answered until after we had some big conversations.
The next section allowed us to add our bequests. We knew we wanted both our financial assets and my husband's impressive collection of "Star Wars" toys from the 1970s to go to our son. We were able to add those quickly and move on.
The funeral and burial arrangements section was even easier. Personally, I believe that funerals are for the living and would want my family to decide on what they thought might be the most healing for them. However, if you care more about these details than I do, it's easy to note things like where you want to be buried and what kind of flowers you want to have at your funeral.
When we hovered over keywords while writing our will, pop-ups appeared with explanations and tips to help us make decisions. This was beneficial throughout the process - it helped us to understand the role and requirements of the will's executor, for example.
Fabric
Fabric provided us with just the right amount of information that we felt like we were making informed decisions, but not so much information that it was overwhelming.
Fabric also saved our work so we could sign back in and pick up where we left off. This was especially helpful because it took us a few weeks to discuss who we wanted to name as a guardian for our son. Our conversations over that time covered questions like:
Would he have to move somewhere? How far and to what kind of environment? Would he have to change schools? If not ours exactly, what style of parenting would be best for him? How old would potential guardians be in five years? How about 10 years? Who would be willing to take on a big personal and financial commitment?
It helped us to know that as he got older, we could also go back and change the designated guardian. I keep a long-term planner (I have a section in my notebook for each month of the year, and a page for the next five years) so I made myself a note to revisit our will sometime in 2024. Fabric also gives you the space to name an alternate guardian, which we did just in case.
Writing the will is all done on just a few screens and it's easy to go back and edit previous answers. I could also see bookmark icons along the side, which indicated what was finished and what was left to do.
Why Fabric made sense for us
Even though we worked on it over two days separated by a few weeks, it still took less than 15 minutes altogether. That's less time than it usually takes us to agree on what to order for dinner.
I'm sure there are more complicated situations when having a lawyer write your will would make sense, but for the vast majority of us Fabric is far less expensive (free!) and far less time consuming.
If writing a will would have included finding, making an appointment with, and paying a lawyer, it would probably be another five years before we actually made it happen.
After the will was finished, Fabric emailed us the final document to print, and strongly recommended signing it in front of two witnesses who are not included in the will in another capacity. I guess we'll throw a weird dinner party with a watch-us-sign-our-will twist? It will be odd, but it will be done - finally!
Disclosure: This post is brought to you by the Personal Finance Insider team. We occasionally highlight financial products and services that can help you make smarter decisions with your money. We do not give investment advice or encourage you to adopt a certain investment strategy. What you decide to do with your money is up to you. If you take action based on one of our recommendations, we get a small share of the revenue from our commerce partners. This does not influence whether we feature a financial product or service. We operate independently from our advertising sales team.
Next Story
I spent $2,000 for 7 nights in a 179-square-foot room on one of the world's largest cruise ships. Take a look inside my cabin.
Colon cancer rates are rising in young people. If you have two symptoms you should get a colonoscopy, a GI oncologist says.
Saudi Arabia wants China to help fund its struggling $500 billion Neom megaproject. Investors may not be too excited.
Catan adds climate change to the latest edition of the world-famous board game
Tired of blatant misinformation in the media? This video game can help you and your family fight fake news!
Tired of blatant misinformation in the media? This video game can help you and your family fight fake news!
JNK India IPO allotment – How to check allotment, GMP, listing date and more
Indian Army unveils selfie point at Hombotingla Pass ahead of 25th anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas
