Should you use AI to create your estate plan?
Artificial intelligence is threatening to take the world by storm. In fact, its use is already pervading our everyday lives. While some AI programs can cut time off menial tasks and help us research and create documentation like written itineraries, the ease of these programs make them susceptible to misuse. This is the case for estate planning. A lot of people are uncomfortable addressing their own mortality when engaging in estate planning, and all of the estate planning options available to them can quickly become overwhelming. In today’s world where we’re all busy and are strapped for time, it may be tempting to turn to AI to have it create an estate plan for you. But doing so can be incredibly dangerous.
The top risks associated with an AI-generated estate plan
Although using an AI program can save you time and effort, its use can be extremely risky in the estate planning context. Here are just a few of the ways in which it could prove detrimental to you:
- Inaccuracies: AI-written documentation is far from perfect. In fact, it often contains errors. While some of these mistakes may seem minor at first, upon closer inspection they can prove to be more severe. This is especially true in the estate planning context where the misuse of a word or phrase can reshape how an entire document can be interpreted and steer how assets are to be divided. This could leave your estate at risk of being subject to litigation and your assets distributed in a way that doesn’t align with your wishes.
- Failure to abide by the law: Estate plans have to adhere to applicable state law. But AI models sometimes pull outdated information to create its documentation, or it misapplies complicated laws. This can leave your estate plan out of compliance with statute, which could have it eventually rendered legally invalid.
- Lack of attention to detail: One of the great benefits of estate planning is having the ability to tailor your plan to fit the unique circumstances of your estate and your family. An AI program probably won’t be able to pick up on all those nuances, meaning that you could miss opportunities to bring your vision of the future into reality. It could also result in situations where your loved ones in a complicated family dynamic, such as a blended family, are left cut out of your inheritance scheme.
- No critical analysis: An AI program isn’t going to be available to have in-depth conversations with you about what you want out of your estate plan and the various avenues available to help you meet your goals. Instead, it’s going to spit out what it thinks is best based on whatever information you input. But you may not know what information is most important to the estate plan that you ultimately want and need. An experienced estate planning attorney, on the other hand, will be able to elicit those facts through dialog with you.
- Lack of accountability: If something goes wrong with your estate plan, you’ll have no recourse against an AI program. In other words, the AI program really has no incentive to provide you with the detailed plan that you truly need. This isn’t so with an attorney.
While turning to modern day technologies may be tempting when it comes to estate planning, doing so puts you at incredible risk. And a mistake during the estate planning process can turn out to be a much bigger problem than it seems, threatening the entire legal validity of your plan. If you don’t want that to happen, then consider working with an experienced professional to develop your plan.