You can get a warm fuzzy feeling from doing it yourself with a downloaded form (say from Nolo) or a cheap app (like WillMaker), but there are subtle ways to mess up, so professional advice is highly recommended. Doing it yourself, you may tend to shy away from thinking about low-probability or painful scenarios, and you don't get to debug it by changing it and trying again. A will is just one part of estate planning, and sometimes a will isn't needed (if the estate is in a trust, its beneficiaries take precedence). Usually you'll need to coordinate the will and your insurance coverage, at a minimum. But don't procrastinate; you can really get burned by having no will at all. In Texas, for example, if you die married and intestate (no will), and you have kids by a previous marriage, your spouse is legally bound to give half of the estate to his/her step-children immediately. Probably not what you would have planned.