Artificial intelligence is the newest technological innovation that many people are excited to use. In many ways, AI can make your life easier – it can help you draft an email, plan a vacation, summarize a document, tell you how much your grandfather’s pocket watch is worth, or answer just about any question you can think of. So it is understandable that some people are turning to AI to help them complete a task that may have been on the To Do List for a while – creating a Will or other estate-planning documents.
After all, if AI can write a legal-sounding document in seconds, why pay an attorney?
The problem is that estate planning isn’t simply about taking a list of your wishes and creating a document that puts those wishes into legal language. A good estate plan has to account for your family members (and sometimes challenging family dynamics), your assets, state law, income and estate tax considerations, joint ownership of assets, beneficiary designations, and what could happen if circumstances change. A document that looks and sounds legally correct can easily still fail to accomplish what you intended.
Here are five reasons you should think twice before relying on AI for your estate plan.
- Estate planning laws vary from state to state
One of the biggest problems with using AI for legal documents is that the law isn’t the same everywhere.
State laws governing Wills, Trusts, witnesses, notarization, powers of attorney, health care decision-making, joint ownership, asset protection, and estate taxes can vary significantly from one state to another, even within New England. Even small procedural requirements can affect whether a document is valid at all, or whether it will work the way you intended.
AI may provide a document that looks correct without taking into account the nuances of the law of the state where you live. Lawyers take bar exams and are admitted to practice in a particular state for this exact reason – because it is important to be well-versed in the law of the state in which you practice, which is different than the law of any other state.
A false reliance on AI generated legal documents is especially risky because estate planning is one area where “close enough” isn’t necessarily good enough. You don’t want to discover after your death that a document didn’t meet a particular legal requirement.
- AI doesn’t know your family the way an estate-planning attorney does
Estate planning is about people as much as it is about paperwork. When you meet with an estate planning attorney for an initial consultation, a good attorney will spend a good deal of time at that initial meeting getting to know you and your family, as well as understanding the assets you own, how you own them, and your planning goals. Maybe you have children from a previous marriage. Perhaps one child has special needs, one is financially inexperienced, or one has received substantial gifts during your lifetime. Maybe you’re concerned about protecting assets for your spouse or grandchildren. Maybe you are in a profession where liability is a concern. Maybe you are not in good health and are concerned about protecting assets from long-term care liability. These and countless other facts about you or your family can dramatically change your attorney’s advice about the best way to structure an estate plan.
An AI chatbot can respond only to the information you give it. Many clients come to us and describe their situation as “simple” when in fact it is anything but simple from a planning perspective. When you don’t understand what information is important, chances are you are not giving AI all of the facts it needs to advise you properly. The AI chatbot isn’t sitting across the table from you and seeing from your facial expressions that the answer to a particular question requires further discussion, nor does it know the kinds of follow-up questions an experienced estate-planning attorney knows to ask. Estate planning attorneys are trained to identify the potential issues you haven’t thought about or don’t even realize exist, to ask the sometimes difficult questions, and to help you make informed decisions about the best options to address the issues that may be present.
- A document can look right and still be wrong
AI is remarkably good at producing documents that look and sound like they were written by an attorney. But a document that sounds like a lawyer wrote it isn’t necessarily a document that will accomplish your goals.
For example, a homemade Will might say who receives your property but fail to address what happens if a beneficiary dies before you. That same Will might be signed by you, but not witnessed or notarized properly, making it invalid. A power of attorney might not allow the person you have named to make decisions for you to take certain steps that are necessary based on the types of assets you own. A trust might be created without properly transferring assets into it, which will require a lengthy and costly probate proceeding following your death.
And the document alone is not enough. Your estate plan documents need to work within the law of your state to accomplish your goals and fit together as part of a larger estate plan, which includes asset ownership and beneficiary designations that are consistent with your plan.
- Your estate plan is more than a will
Another common mistake is thinking that estate planning means simply writing a Will.
A complete estate plan typically includes powers of attorney and health care directives that address decision-making during incapacity, as well as Wills, and revocable and/or irrevocable Trusts. If you own real estate, deeds may be necessary to transfer ownership of your property, as well as a Declaration of Homestead that protects the equity in your primary residence against creditors’ claims.
The individual components are important, as well as how they interact with and impact each other. For example, your Will generally doesn’t control assets that pass directly to a joint owner or a beneficiary, or that are owned by a Trust. Your Will will not be effective, despite how well it’s written, unless asset ownership and beneficiaries are coordinated properly.
AI can help you make a checklist of questions to discuss with a professional. It is impossible for it to independently verify that every part of your estate plan works together, or know what questions to ask to make sure that’s the case.
- Taxes are Complicated
Massachusetts is one of a handful of states with a separate state estate tax, imposed on the value of the assets you own at the time of your death. With good advice and appropriate estate planning, it is possible to reduce or eliminate this tax, but this type of planning requires the guidance of an experienced estate planning attorney. Knowing the subtleties of Massachusetts law and estate tax regulations and practice around things like out of state property (like your New Hampshire lake house or your Vermont ski condo) or gifts you may have made to your child to purchase their first home are key to advising you properly.
AI can be a useful starting point for estate-planning education. It can help you understand unfamiliar terminology, create a list of questions for an attorney, organize information about your assets, or explain the difference between documents. We encourage you to use AI as a starting point to learn about estate planning, and to follow that up with a visit to the websites of estate planning attorneys in your state where you can find state-specific articles about planning that may be appropriate for you. We do not encourage you to use AI to do your estate planning. Although the time and cost savings may be tempting, an inappropriate estate plan will create more issues than it solves, including problems that aren’t obvious to you until it’s too late to correct them.
Your estate plan represents some of the most important decisions you can make about your family, your property, and your future. Let an experienced estate planning attorney help you make the right decisions and put a plan in place that is appropriate for you and your family’s situation. I will end up saving you time and money in the long run and give you peace of mind.
Attorney Brittany Hinojosa Citron is a senior associate attorney with the Dedham, Massachusetts, firm of Samuel, Sayward & Baler LLC, which focuses on advising its clients in the areas of estate planning, estate settlement, and elder law matters. This article is not intended to provide legal advice or create or imply an attorney-client relationship. No information contained herein is a substitute for a personal consultation with an attorney. For more information or to schedule a consultation with one of our attorneys, please call 781-461-1020.
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