Over 60% of people in the U.S. and Canada still don’t have a current will. Not because they don’t think it’s important, but because existing options don’t work. Hiring a lawyer to walk through the process and create a “bespoke” will is a great option for those who can afford it, but not everyone can, nor is it really necessary for most people (who tend to have a pretty simple estate plan, meaning all the lawyer is doing is sticking some names and details in a template!). The alternative that always existed was the “will kit”, a basic package with some physical templates and guides.
Enter the “online will builder”. A few years back, the internet thought it had solved this problem. Sites like Trust & Will, LegalZoom, Ethos, FreeWill, and WillMaker in the U.S. – and Willful, LegalWills.ca, and Epilogue in Canada – cropped up, promising to make doing your own will easy and finally bridge the gap between the basic old fashioned will kit, on the one hand, and an expensive bespoke lawyer experience, on the other. However, despite their flashy website sand extensive guidance found throughout their platforms, these sites still face an abandonment rate over 70%.
Why Because they all use the same broken approach that will kits had: they’re only solving half the problem. Will kits and online will builders take care of the drafting portion of the lawyer’s role, but they fail to replicate the other critical element of the lawyer’s role: talking with their client!
Wills include all sorts of legal concepts and terms: executors, bequests, beneficiaries, trusts – to name a few. They also involve making difficult decisions, often with competing considerations. All of our major competitors use a static wizard interface that expect you to already know what you’re doing. They ask “Who should be your executor?” without explaining what an executor does. Maybe there’s a dropdown or a section where you can go to get an explanation, or maybe there’s a webchat on the site where you can go to ask questions, but at the end of the day, you still need to figure it out for yourself.
The result? Abandonment rates of 60-70% and completion times of 45-60 minutes for those who actually finish. It’s like being handed a medical prescription form and told “just fill this out yourself.”
So what’s the solution to this part of the problem aside from hiring a lawyer? Should you turn to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to help you prepare your will? We sure hope not! A.I. is a powerful tool and is revolutionizing so many things these days, but it’s important to understand what it’s good at and what it’s not. A.I. excels at conversing with a user and “translating” that user’s questions and commands into actionable outputs. However, when left to create things – especially complex things involving many different elements or complex concepts – A.I. tends to “hallucinate” or simply get things wrong. Asking ChatGPT to write your will is a recipe for disaster.
So then what’s our solution? The Succession Wills ‘AI Legal Assistant’. While you’re free to use our standard online will builder wizard interface if that’s what you prefer, we’ve created the AI Legal Assistant as an alternative interface, free of additional charge. Instead of filling in fields, our platform just has a conversation with you—like sitting down with an estate planning lawyer, minus the expensive fees.
Here’s the critical innovation: Our AI never drafts your will. Instead, it conducts the consultation (asking thoughtful questions, explaining concepts, understanding your situation), then feeds validated data into our proven, lawyer-built document generation system.
The results:
- 60% completion rates (vs. 25-30% industry standard)
- 15-25 minutes to complete (vs. 45-60 minutes)
- More comprehensive wills because the AI asks the right follow-up questions
Here’s an example:
Traditional platforms (Trust & Will, LegalZoom, Willful, Epilogue, etc.):
Q: What is your marital status?
Q: Do you have children?
Q: Who should be executor?
Succession Wills:
AI: “Let’s talk about your family. Are you married?”
You: “Yes, with two kids, ages 8 and 11.”
AI: “We’ll need to think through who would care for your children. If something happened to both of you, have you considered guardians?”
One collects information. The other helps you think through decisions. That’s why our completion rates are double the industry standard. The AI provides guidance; the document system ensures legal reliability with thousands of lines of carefully drafted code personally approved by our legal team.
Trust & Will has a basic FAQ chatbot. LegalZoom charges extra for attorney support. Willful, Epilogue, LegalWills.ca, Ethos, FreeWill, and WillMaker use pure static wizards with no AI guidance at all. Our highly trained fully-integrated AI gives you the guidance you need while collecting your answers to feed them directly into our will builder system, free of additional charge.
What else makes Succession Wills special? Well, if that innovation isn’t enough, that’s okay. When we built Succession Wills, we had more in mind than A.I. At Succession Wills, we’re proud of a lot of things:
Succession Wills is priced significantly below most competitors while delivering a superior experience. We include everything in one transparent price—no nickel-and-diming for additional documents or yearly update fees. Our lifetime update access means you pay once and can modify your will whenever life changes, unlike competitors who charge annual fees after the first year.
Succession Wills works in both the United States and Canada. Every competitor is locked into one country: Trust & Will, LegalZoom, Ethos, FreeWill, and WillMaker serve U.S. only. Willful, Epilogue, and LegalWills.ca serve Canada only. If you have assets or family in both countries, you need multiple services with competitors. With us, one platform handles everything.
Our wills are just better. Maybe this is a nuance only lawyers can understand, but there’s something to be said for drafting skill when it comes to legal documents. The wills generated by our system are clearer, more comprehensive and more customizable that those of our competitors. Trust us, your loved ones charged with implementing your will are going to thank you for this later when it comes time to actually read this thing!
So what do our competitors do well? It’s not all bad out there! Trust & Will has strong brand recognition (1M+ users). LegalZoom has 20+ years experience (4M+ documents). Willful was accepted into the Law Society of Ontario’s innovation project. Epilogue was founded by estate planning lawyers (so were we, for the record!). LegalWills.ca covers all Canadian provinces. FreeWill offers free basic wills (we need to stress the word “basic” here!). These are legitimate companies doing good work. But they’re solving yesterday’s problem (accessible forms) rather than today’s problem (guidance people need to actually complete the process).
Why does this matter now? the estate planning industry has evolved in waves:
- Wave 1 (LegalZoom, 2001): Made documents accessible
- Wave 2 (Trust & Will, Willful, Epilogue, 2017-2020): Made interfaces prettier
- Wave 3 (Succession Wills, now): AI-powered guidance that helps people actually complete estate planning
Try It Risk-Free! Experience the difference at successionwills.com. See how conversational guidance changes everything. 30-day money-back guarantee.
Stop filling out forms. Start having a conversation.
