ChatGPT and Estate Planning: 5 risks of Using AI to Prepare your Will

Takeouts: 

• AI is becoming prolific in our daily lives. While it may be useful in certain circumstances, it is important to ensure you are not relying on AI to provide you with legal advice or the preparation of your estate planning documents.

• Utilsiing AI in this regard may present significant risks in the structure of your estate planning and may impact the overall validity of your estate planning documents.

• It is important that you consider these risks prior to preparation of your estate planning documents, and seek out professional advice to ensure your wishes are adequately accounted for.

 

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming prolific in our day to day lives. It is often used to write and edit documents, used for research purposes and other personal tasks. It is unsurprising that people now turn to AI for legal advice and questions regarding their estate planning. While it may seem like a convenient and inexpensive alternative to obtaining legal advice for the preparation of your estate planning documents, there are risks involved in relying on AI to draft your estate planning documents and provide you with legal advice.

Here are five risks that may be associated with the use of AI to prepare your estate planning documents:

 

1. AI may not understand your individual circumstances 

Estate planning is not a one size fits all experience, and your documents should reflect your individual family circumstances and wishes. AI is only able to provide advice on the information provided by the person interacting with the chat bot.

As such, it may not accurately identify potential risks or issues that may be present in your specific circumstances that professionals would investigate and provide pinpointed advice on. For example, you may have children from a previous relationship, a blended family, jointly owned property or superannuation that needs to be taken into account in your estate planning.

These circumstances may have a significant impact on the planning of your estate documents. AI may provide you with incorrect information or fail to account for potential risks within your estate planning.

 

2. AI may not account for legal and procedural requirements 

A Will, Power of Attorney and Enduring Guardianship are all legal documents that have strict legal requirements on their execution to ensure that they are valid and to avoid potential disputes that may arise in future.

Wills and Estates Lawyers have an obligation to ensure that a person creating estate planning documents have testamentary capacity to prepare them,  ensuring that there is no undue influence on the testator and ensuring that the documents are validly executed in accordance with legislation in that particular jurisdiction.

An AI chat bot may generate a Will or estate planning document, however it may fail to advise of the strict legal requirements present within that jurisdiction to ensure that they are validly executed. Having a document that is questionably executed may create disputes or difficulties down the track when the person that created the documents has lost capacity or passes away. The documents may be held to be void or invalid if they are incorrectly executed and may be treated as though they do not exist.

 

3. Using AI may misinterpret your instructions

Seemingly straightforward instructions in your will may produce a different outcome as wanted, due to the importance of wording within estate planning documents. You may instruct AI to provide a clause leaving your estate to your children or a specific gift to family members, however the particular wording will depend on who receives what share of the gift.

For example, if you wish to give each of your 10 grandchildren a $1,000.00 gift within your will, the wording generated by AI may produce a different outcome from what you intended.

These are the types of questions and particularities that are essential in preparing your estate plan. A lawyer can discuss these options with you in depth, identify and potential issues and advise as to the best way forward.

 

4. AI can give you a false sense of security 

While AI can come across as very convincing and legitimate, there are often mistakes within advice given or documents drafted which may affect the structure of your entire estate plan. A document may seem to contain legal terminology and present as very professional. However, a legal professional may be able to identify assets that have been left out or situations unaccounted for.

Further, AI obtains information from various different sources, and it may be likely that information received could be in regard to a different state or jurisdiction, where legal requirements may differ from the areas in which you hold your assets. An estate planning document that looks professional may not necessarily achieve your intended outcome.

 

5. You may be sharing your sensitive information with AI

Estate planning often contains highly sensitive and personal information. This may include your personal details, details about your family, assets and beneficiaries. Before you enter information into an AI tool, it is important to consider what kind of information you are providing and the uncertainty regarding how it may be handled thereafter.

It is important to be particularly cautious about uploading previous estate planning documents, financial records or other documents that contain significant detail about your personal circumstances and confidential information.

Legal professionals will treat your matter and all information provided by you as confidential and sensitive. Not only this, but they will ensure that your matter is approached with the utmost sensitivity and careful guidance to ensure that your wishes are fulfilled.

 

Conclusion 

While AI can be helpful in traversing unfamiliar legal terminology or preparing questions to ask your lawyer, it is an important consideration to ensure you are not relying on AI to prepare your estate planning documents.

Your estate planning should be tailored to your specific circumstances and carefully considered to ensure that it reflects your wishes and complies with legal requirements. Before relying on AI for the preparation of these documents, consider whether any of the above risks may apply to your estate.

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