If you have spent any time researching online estate planning, you have probably noticed something: the price gap is enormous. LegalZoom will sell you a basic estate plan for a few hundred dollars. Trust & Will charges $599 for a couples trust, plus another $299 a year if you actually want to talk to a lawyer. A traditional estate planning attorney in California typically charges between $3,500 and $5,000 for a full estate plan — sometimes considerably more for Korean-speaking attorneys in Los Angeles or the Bay Area.

Easy Trust Now sits in a different category from any of these options. We are a California law firm that built a bilingual online intake system to make our services affordable and accessible, not a software company selling form-filling tools. That distinction shapes everything about what you receive, and it is worth understanding clearly before you choose where to put your family’s estate plan.

What You Are Actually Buying From LegalZoom or Trust & Will

Let us start by being precise about what the big DIY platforms sell. They sell access to a software product. You log in, answer a series of questions, and the software assembles a document from a standardized template. That document is then yours to print, sign, and notarize. The company that sold it to you has no ongoing duty to you, has never reviewed your specific situation, and has expressly disclaimed any attorney-client relationship in their terms of service.

This is not a criticism. It is the legal structure these companies have to operate under. LegalZoom and Trust & Will are not law firms. They cannot be law firms, because most U.S. states prohibit non-attorney ownership of a legal practice. That is why their terms of service tell you, in plain language, that they are not providing legal advice and that no attorney-client relationship is being formed. When something goes wrong with your document later, that disclaimer is what protects them.

Their “Attorney Access” Is Not the Same as Having an Attorney

Both companies advertise some form of attorney support. LegalZoom offers it as a subscription that costs about $20 a month. Trust & Will charges $299 a year as an add-on. In both cases, here is what that money actually buys you:

• A Q&A service where you can ask general questions to attorneys who have never seen your document, have no file on your family, and have no ongoing obligation to you.

• A limited number of phone calls per year, often capped at 30 minutes or one issue.

• Attorneys who may not be licensed in your state — Trust & Will’s attorney access is not even available in all 50 states.

• No drafting, no review of your specific document, and no commitment to be there in the future when you actually need help.

In other words, you pay extra to ask questions of strangers who cannot represent you, while the document itself was assembled by software with no attorney involvement specific to your case. If your spouse passes away in 2032 and your family needs to make a qualified disclaimer decision within nine months, there is no “your lawyer” to call. There is only a support queue.

What You Actually Get From Easy Trust Now

Easy Trust Now is a California law firm. When you complete our intake and pay for your plan, you become a client of the firm — not a software subscriber. A licensed California attorney personally reviews the questionnaire you submitted, confirms that the structure of your plan is appropriate for your family and your assets, and stands behind the documents that are produced. That is a different legal relationship, and it carries different protections under California law.

Real Attorney-Client Relationship

Because we are operating as a law firm rather than a document platform, several things become true that simply are not true at LegalZoom or Trust & Will:

• Attorney-client privilege protects your communications with us. The information you share during intake, the questions you ask, and the decisions you make are confidential under California Evidence Code § 954. None of that is true for communications with a tech platform.

• We carry professional liability (malpractice) insurance and we are accountable to the California State Bar. DIY platforms carry product liability disclaimers and cap their financial responsibility at what you paid.

• We have ongoing duties to you as a client — not just at the moment of intake, but later, when life changes happen and you need to update or use the plan.

• Our advice is real legal advice. We are not allowed to tell you “this is just information, not legal advice,” the way a tech platform must.

A Trust Drafted for California, by a California Attorney

California has features in its trust and probate law that the major DIY platforms either do not handle or handle generically because they have to write to all 50 states. A short list of things that are in every Easy Trust Now plan as a matter of course:

• Disclaimer trust provisions with the aggregate-theory-of-community-property language California allows, so the surviving spouse can disclaim a whole asset rather than just a half-interest.

• Heggstad / Probate Code § 850 general assignment of assets, so any property accidentally left out of the trust can be brought in without a full probate.

• Portability election authorization under IRC § 2010(c)(5), coordinated with the disclaimer trust so the surviving spouse can choose the best tax path after the first death.

• SECURE Act 2.0–compliant retirement plan provisions, so IRA and 401(k) assets passing to the trust qualify as see-through trusts under current Treasury Regulations.

• California-specific digital assets authority under Probate Code §§ 870–884 (RUFADAA).

• A no-contest clause drafted to the limits of Probate Code §§ 21310–21315, rather than overbroad language that will not actually be enforced.

These are not premium add-ons. They are baseline provisions a California attorney writes into a trust because they should be there. A $399 generic template typically does not include them, because the template has to function in 50 states and cannot make California-specific assumptions.

Bilingual Intake in Korean and English

Korean-American families face two issues at once: estate planning is hard enough to understand in your first language, and Korean-speaking estate planning attorneys in California typically charge $3,500 to $5,000 because there are not many of them. Easy Trust Now is built specifically for this community. The entire intake is in Korean and English side-by-side, the underlying attorney is fluent in both languages and the legal concepts that translate awkwardly (도립, 유류분, 증여, 상속), and the firm understands cross-border issues that LegalZoom and Trust & Will simply cannot handle — such as assets held in Korea, Korean forced-heir rules, and the interplay between U.S. and Korean estate tax.

What About Trust & Will Specifically?

Trust & Will deserves its own discussion because it is the most polished and substantively serious of the DIY platforms. It is genuinely better than LegalZoom for estate planning. The user experience is good, the documents are state-specific (not just one template for everyone), and the company does work with attorneys who design and update the templates. For a young family in a low-tax state with simple assets and no Korean-side complications, Trust & Will is a reasonable choice.

But “reasonable choice” and “right choice for your family” are different statements. Here is where Trust & Will’s model still falls short for a typical California homeowner:

• Their couples trust is $599, plus $299 a year for attorney access — so the real first-year cost is $898 if you want any lawyer involvement, and you pay $299 again every year you want to keep that access. Easy Trust Now’s couples plan includes attorney review with no annual fee.

• Their attorney access is a Q&A line, not a relationship. The attorney you reach has never seen your specific document, has no file on your family, and is not the same attorney you would speak with next time.

• Their templates are designed to work in 43+ states. California-specific provisions (the ones listed above) are not their priority because adding state-specific complexity makes the platform harder to maintain across jurisdictions.

• Their model assumes you will return to the platform and pay subscription fees forever to keep your plan updated. Estate planning amendments and follow-up under a real attorney relationship work differently.

• They do not offer bilingual Korean intake, do not handle cross-border Korean assets, and do not have an attorney trained in Korean inheritance law on the other end of the questionnaire.

Trust & Will is a software company offering software. Easy Trust Now is a law firm offering legal services through software-driven intake. The first model is cheaper if all you want is paper. The second model is what you want if you want a plan that holds up when something actually happens.

Side-By-Side: What You Actually Get for Your Money

Set aside the marketing language and compare what is delivered:

LegalZoom Estate Plan (around $250–$500 + $20/month for attorney access)

• Form-fill document assembled by software.

• No attorney involved with your specific case.

• No attorney-client relationship.

• Q&A line with strangers if you pay extra monthly.

• Generic template designed for all 50 states.

• English only.

Trust & Will Couples Trust ($599 + $299/year for attorney access)

• Form-fill document, state-specific template.

• Software-driven; no specific attorney reviews your file.

• No attorney-client relationship.

• Q&A and line-by-line review available for an annual fee.

• Optimized for the median U.S. user, not for California-specific planning.

• English only.

Traditional California Attorney ($3,500–$5,000+)

• Custom-drafted documents.

• Real attorney-client relationship.

• California-specific provisions throughout.

• Hourly billing for any follow-up.

• Limited Korean-language availability.

• Process typically takes 4–8 weeks of office visits.

Easy Trust Now Couples Plan

• Documents drafted by a licensed California attorney.

• Real attorney-client relationship with a California law firm.

• Disclaimer trust, Heggstad assignment, portability, SECURE Act 2.0, RUFADAA, and California-specific no-contest clause included as standard.

• Bilingual Korean and English intake throughout.

• Cross-border Korea/US awareness built in.

• Online intake completed in under an hour; documents delivered through your secure portal.

• No subscription required to keep your documents valid.

Why the DIY Approach Fails More Often Than You Hear About

The dirty secret of the online estate planning industry is that no one finds out the documents have problems until it is too late to fix them. The settlor is incapacitated or has passed away, and the family is sitting in front of a probate attorney who is reading through a generic template that left out the provisions California needed. By that point, the cost of fixing the problem dwarfs the cost of doing it right the first time.

California probate fees on a $1.5 million home alone exceed $28,000 in statutory fees. A failed disclaimer trust because the document gave the surviving spouse too much control can cost a family hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary estate tax. A trust that was never funded because the deed was never recorded into the trust’s name is a piece of paper, not an estate plan. An attorney who actually knows your file catches these things. A subscription service to a Q&A line does not.

The Bottom Line

You can absolutely buy a trust document for $399. What you cannot buy at that price is the relationship that makes the document work — the attorney who knows your family, has reviewed your assets, drafted your plan to California’s specific rules, and will be there in five, ten, or twenty years when your spouse passes away and someone has to decide whether to make a qualified disclaimer within nine months.

Easy Trust Now was built around a simple idea: a real California attorney, a real attorney-client relationship, real California-specific drafting, and bilingual access for the Korean-American community — at a price that sits well below what a traditional law firm would charge, and that includes the attorney review the DIY services charge extra for every year. We are not the cheapest option on the internet. We are the option that gives you a plan that will still be the right plan for your family when it actually matters.

A $399 DIY trust is a document. Easy Trust Now is an estate plan, and a lawyer who stands behind it.