About Us

We are the creators of Make Your Own Wills. A Canadian company, based out of the Province of Alberta.

Make Your Own Wills is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.

The information and products generated on our site were created by us, combined we have more than 35 years of experience in estate planning.

At Make Your Own Wills, we know that access to information about estate planning is a barrier to anyone who wants to make their own Will, Enduring Power of Attorney and/or Personal Directive.

We also know that legal fees are prohibitively high when hiring a legal professional to prepare the documents for you. We designed our site to offer people across Canada estate planning information at their fingertips and enabling them to make their own affordable estate planning documents from the comfort of their own home.

Our site is designed for use by:

Canadian residents (except for those residing in Quebec) - Quebec is based on a Civil Law system, whereas the rest of Canada is based on a Common Law System.
Those who wish to make their own documents
Those who have mental capacity to make their own documents
Users over the age of eighteen (18) years

Our site is not designed for use by:

People who require legal advice. Make Your Own Wills is not a law firm, is not a substitute for a lawyer or a law firm and does not provide legal advice. The information, content, forms and products on our Site are not advice, do not constitute legal advice and do not create a solicitor-client relationship in any way. If you require legal advice, contact a lawyer
Residents of Quebec or those who reside outside of Canada. Quebec is based on a Civil Law system, whereas the rest of Canada is based on a Common Law System. Similarly, countries outside of Canada have different laws and requirements for Wills.
People who need Mutual Wills. Mutual Wills are special types of Wills designed for blended families and irrevocable upon the death of one of the Testators. If you have questions about Mutual Wills, please seek the assistance of a qualified legal professional.
People who wish to appoint a Corporate Executor/Trustee- Corporate Trustees and Executors have their own requirements for clauses in a Will and require a retainer agreement to be signed prior to being appointed in your Will. Should you wish to appoint a Corporate Executor/Trustee, please discuss the same with their representative and also a qualified legal practitioner.
People who are trying to create documents for someone else – Our site is for use by Testators/Makers/Donors directly and not for use by third parties on their behalf.
People with complex estates: For example. property or business interests in multiple countries
People who have beneficiaries (adult or minor) who are on government assistance programs – Note that in some jurisdictions, a gift to someone receiving government assistance (ie. AISH in Alberta) may disqualify them from all government assistance.

Security

Your security and privacy of your data is important to us. We take every precaution to provide an online service with high standards of security.

SSL

Our website has SSL web security to keep connections secure and private over an HTTPS connection. All submissions are served across a protected Secure Socket Layer.

Encrypted Submissions

All submissions are Encrypted with high-grade RSA 2048 at the user’s computer and then transferred and stored securely on a Server. Each submission is transferred and stored in secure format so that no one else can read it. We secure and keep private our decryption key.

As per our Terms & Conditions, we only retain the PDF questionnaire you submit via the Upload and Pay Form for a period of 14 days from the date we deliver your documents to you.

DDoS Protection

Our website is hosted on servers that are monitored 24/7 for any suspicious activity and has DDoS protection.

Payment Processing

The Upload & Pay form has PCI Certification and utilizes PCI DSS Service Provider Level 1, the highest security attainment you can have as a business that collects payments from and integrates with credit cards. PCI compliance is the security standard set by the major global credit card companies, including Mastercard and Visa. This certification is on top of the PCI Service Provider Level 1 security certification of the integrated payment partner we use, which is Stripe Payments Canada Ltd.

Stripe also encrypts all card numbers with AES-256. Decryption keys are stored by Stripe on separate machines. Stripe Payment Canada Ltd.’s infrastructure for storing, decrypting, and transmitting card numbers runs in separate hosting infrastructure, and doesn’t share any credentials with Stripe’s primary services.