It’s true, social media almost destroyed your estate plan and many others too. How did this happen? As an estate lawyer in Douglas County Colorado, we study estate planning wills and trusts and how those topics are handled in the media.
Back in the 70’s, there was only newspaper, radio and TV media. The contributors to those today would be known as “content creators” and they were all lawyers specializing in estate planning. They wrote objective, fact-based materials for the media to help educate the public about wills, trusts, probate and estate planning. The articles and interviews were easy to fact check and were also reliable based on their source: experienced lawyers who specialized in estate planning.
Fast forward to 2025 and social media has displaced the traditional media formats listed above. Today, Facebook, Threads, X (Twitter) and Instagram are where folks go for information. And with this development came the wild west of media: complete lack of controls, posting by unreliable sources, totally false information and the emergence of the “pretender planners”. More on this below. In other words, we have media chaos with no way for the public to know, measure, or judge which information is accurate, and which is garbage.
How did this impact estate planning?
Here are the impacts of social media on estate planning:
- Choosing an estate planner has become a popularity contest not based on competence.
- People started choosing planners based on what others said on social media instead of asking trusted sources such as their own accountant or financial advisor.
- The pretender vs. contender factor arose. Popularity around a so-called influencer became why people chose a planner over more competent and experienced professionals. As a result many estate plans were ruined by incompetence.
- Social media became the top hunting ground for scams and con artists who had an easier time trapping the unwary for the above reasons.
- Online or web-based estate planning arose which was only an electronic version of fill in the blank forms or online scams. Many people lost their savings.
- Uncontrolled and unwise use of AI made all of this worse not better. Recently, the FTC has issued warnings about online scams and AI to alert consumers to these risks.
What has made these factors so dangerous to the consumer is that now we must independently vet and investigate who are the pretenders vs. the contenders. Who is the “popular” lawyer who claims to do it all vs. the attorneys who actually specialize in estate planning. Social media pressures us to rush important decisions on issues like “who will design and prepare my estate plan?” in the same way we speed through news headlines, FB posts, and reels on Instagram. This is similar to being scammed in the past but on steroids, times 10.
So what happened?
Many people adopted incorrect and improper plans and documents. Had this continued unchecked, many would have had their estate plans destroyed resulting in devastation to themselves and their families. Thankfully some sanity has been restored. The FTC and other government agencies started issuing warnings about online and social media scams. People started to ask questions about what they were seeing online and on social media and started turning to trusted advisors.
How to Protect Yourself
To protect yourself, here is a list of simple steps you can follow:
- Avoid social media offers if possibe.
- Ask before signing up. An offer may sound attractive on social media but check to make sure it is real first.
- Ask your trusted advisors before proceeding. Those should be your accountant and financial advisor.
- Ask a reputable estate planning specialist for feedback on the offer you are considering.
- Deal only with a specialist. Treat your estate planner the same way you treat your doctors: you wouldn’t see your foot doctor if you have an issue with your heart. Use the same principle for your estate planning. Choose to work with a contender, not a pretender.
