The most important thing in a new parent’s estate plan isn’t the house or the 401(k). It’s six words: “I nominate [Name] as guardian.” Without a signed will containing that language, a court decides who raises a child if both parents die — without their input, without their preferences, and on the court’s timeline.
According to Caring.com’s 2025 study (conducted with YouGov across 2,500+ adults), only 24% of Americans have a will — down from 33% in 2022. For new parents, that number is particularly alarming: roughly 64% of parents with minor children have no named guardian in writing, based on figures from 2025 study roundups (treat that figure as directional, not precise). A basic estate plan is fixable in an afternoon, free or close to it. The catch is that “free” isn’t always sufficient.
The quick verdict: parents renting with modest assets and no real estate can use Fabric’s genuinely free will as a legitimate first step — guardian nomination included. Homeowners or parents with more complex finances should use Trust & Will’s $299 couple Will Plan. Tomorrow, the once-popular free service, was acquired by Ethos Life in January 2022; tomorrow.me now redirects to Ethos’s estate product, and it is no longer an independent service.
This article sorts through what each option actually covers, where the gaps sit, and at what asset level free stops being enough.
This is not legal advice. Requirements vary by state. Consult a licensed estate-planning attorney before finalizing any estate documents — especially if you own real estate, have a blended family, or hold assets above approximately $500,000.
What New Parents Actually Need (and Why a Guardian Nomination Comes First)
A guardian nomination is made inside a will — and a will is the only legal document that makes it. Courts give the nomination strong deference, though they aren’t legally bound to honor it. That distinction matters: a clear, signed, state-specific will is the best protection available to a parent.
A complete new-parent estate plan typically includes four documents:
- Last Will and Testament — names the guardian, distributes assets, appoints an executor
- Durable Power of Attorney (POA) — authorizes someone to manage finances if a parent is incapacitated but alive
- Healthcare Directive / Living Will — documents medical wishes; appoints a healthcare proxy
- Beneficiary designations — on retirement accounts, life insurance, and bank accounts (these pass outside the will and override it)
A living trust becomes relevant once a family owns real property or has significant assets — it avoids probate, which can be slow and public. But for a family renting with a Roth IRA and a newborn, a signed will is the immediate priority.
Online wills are legally valid in all 50 states when properly executed. Nearly all states require two adult witnesses to the signing. Louisiana is the only state that also requires notarization. A self-proving affidavit — available in all states except Ohio and the District of Columbia — lets a will be admitted without witnesses having to appear later. The paperwork isn’t the blocker. Inertia is. A signed basic will naming a guardian beats a comprehensive plan that never gets finished.
What Happened to Tomorrow (tomorrow.me) in 2026?
Tomorrow was a well-regarded free estate-planning app that let users create a will and nominate a guardian in minutes. It no longer exists as an independent product.
Ethos Life, a life insurance company, acquired Tomorrow in January 2022 (reported by GeekWire at the time). The domain tomorrow.me now redirects to Ethos’s estate product at ethos.com. The free will and guardian nomination still exist under the Ethos platform, but the service is now positioned as a lead-generation tool for Ethos life insurance — designed to move users toward purchasing a policy.
Ethos documents are state-specific, and Ethos itself notes that its documents “cannot ensure enforceability or validity in all states or in every instance” — standard language for any online estate tool, but worth noting.
The practical implication: parents who remember Tomorrow and come looking for it are now on an insurance company’s platform. That isn’t categorically bad. Life insurance is a legitimate need for new parents, and the free will remains functional for simple situations. But the business model has shifted. An insurance company offering a free will isn’t doing so out of altruism — the goal is policy sales.
For simple situations (renting, no real estate, straightforward family structure), Ethos/Tomorrow occupies the same functional tier as Fabric: a legitimate free starting point with meaningful limitations.
Fabric (by Gerber Life): The Free Option — What It Actually Covers
Fabric, now owned by Gerber Life, offers a free suite at meetfabric.com/wills: a basic will with guardian nomination, financial POA, healthcare directive, and HIPAA authorization — no cost, no credit card required.
Important caveat on scope: At least one source disagrees on whether the POA and healthcare directive are included in the free tier as of 2026. Fabric’s own marketing presents them as included, but the discrepancy is worth verifying directly at meetfabric.com before relying on those documents. The implications are significant either way: if the free tier does include POA and healthcare directive, Fabric is more complete than many paid products. If it doesn’t, there’s a meaningful incapacity gap — a parent who is injured but alive would have no one legally authorized to manage their finances or medical decisions.
What Fabric’s free will covers:
- Guardian nomination for minor children
- Basic asset distribution instructions
- Executor appointment
- (Verify at source: financial POA, healthcare directive, HIPAA authorization)
What Fabric does not cover:
- A living trust (no built-in probate avoidance)
- Attorney review or access
- Document update service
- Multiple beneficiaries per will (per third-party comparison sites — verify)
The revenue model is life insurance through Gerber Life. The free will is lead-generation, which keeps the product genuinely free but creates pressure toward insurance products.
For a renting family in their late twenties with two kids, no real estate, and modest savings, Fabric represents a rational trade-off. It’s one of the few genuinely free estate tools that’s useful rather than a bait-and-switch. The limitation is real — no trust, no attorney access, limited customization — but for the right user profile, that’s an acceptable starting point rather than a fatal flaw.
Trust & Will: What It Costs, What It Covers, and Who It’s For
Trust & Will is the paid option in this comparison, and for homeowners or parents with meaningful assets, the price is justified. Here’s the current pricing (verify at trustandwill.com/compare, as prices may change):
Will Plan
- Individual: $199
- Couple: $299
- Includes: state-specific will, guardian nomination, durable POA, healthcare/advance directive, HIPAA authorization
Trust Plan
- Individual: $499
- Couple: $599
- Adds: revocable living trust, pour-over will, schedule of assets, certification of trust (the probate-avoidance tier)
Other tiers
- Annual membership: $49/year after year one — digital vault, AI assistant, unlimited updates; documents remain valid if the membership lapses
- Attorney support add-on: $299/year, not available in all states
- Young adults 18-26: $69 standalone
The $299 couple Will Plan takes roughly 15-20 minutes to complete online. Documents are attorney-designed and state-specific.
One important clarification on the attorney tier: practitioners on r/EstatePlanning consistently note that Trust & Will’s $299/year attorney add-on is a brief, general explainer call — not substantive legal advice. As one estate attorney noted in the community: “Don’t bother paying an attorney to review Trust & Will. A good attorney will either refuse or charge more than if you paid the attorney to do it right the first time.” The attorney tier provides context, not counsel.
For context on what full attorney service costs: a comprehensive couple’s estate plan runs approximately $1,500-$2,000 in lower cost-of-living markets and $6,000-$9,000 or more in high-cost states like California (sourced from practitioner discussions on r/EstatePlanning). Against that benchmark, $299 for a couple’s will with POA and healthcare directive is genuinely good value for the right situation.
Trust & Will is also the right tool for parents thinking beyond the immediate will — connecting estate planning to long-term retirement and legacy planning tools becomes meaningful as assets grow and the picture gets more complex.
Head-to-Head Comparison: Guardian Speed, Document Scope, and the Gaps That Matter
| Feature | Fabric (Free) | Trust & Will Will Plan ($299 couple) | Ethos / Tomorrow (Free) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $299 couple | Free |
| Basic Will | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Guardian Nomination | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Financial POA | Verify at source | Yes | Yes (verify scope) |
| Healthcare Directive | Verify at source | Yes | Yes (verify scope) |
| Living Trust | No | No (Trust Plan: $599) | No |
| Attorney Access | None | Limited ($299/yr add-on) | None |
| Annual Fee | None | $49/yr after year 1 | None |
| Time to Complete | Under 20 min | Under 20 min | Under 20 min |
| Business Model | Life insurance (Gerber Life) | Subscription / attorney upsell | Life insurance (Ethos) |
| Recommended For | Renters, simple estate | Homeowners, straightforward family | Renters, simple estate |
All three services can produce a guardian nomination in under 20 minutes online. The actual speed constraint isn’t the software — it’s the signing requirement. A will is legally worthless until signed in front of two adult witnesses per state law. Completing a document online and leaving it unsigned is the same as not completing it.
The POA gap is the real argument against free-only for homeowning parents. A will only activates at death. A durable POA activates during incapacity — a parent in a coma after an accident, or incapacitated for months. Without a POA, no one is legally authorized to pay the mortgage, manage bank accounts, or make financial decisions. If Fabric’s free tier genuinely includes a financial POA (verify), this gap closes for Fabric users. If it doesn’t, the free option leaves a meaningful hole that a $299 Trust & Will couple plan fills completely.
The trust gap is significant for homeowners: neither Fabric nor Ethos/Tomorrow produces a living trust. Trust & Will’s Trust Plan ($599 couple) does. Without a trust, real estate and significant assets pass through probate — a public, sometimes slow process that a living trust avoids entirely.
The attorney gap is consistent across all three free options and partially addressed by Trust & Will’s paid tier. Practitioners on r/EstatePlanning are consistent on one point: “The problem isn’t just ambiguity — it’s not knowing what you don’t know. It takes a lot of skill to know a simple will is sufficient.” For complex situations, no online tool fully bridges that gap.
The Decision Matrix: Which Option Is Right for You
This is not legal advice. Requirements vary by state. Consult a licensed estate-planning attorney before finalizing — especially if you own real estate, have a blended family, or hold assets over approximately $500,000.
Tier 1 — Budget-first, simple situation Profile: renting, no real estate, modest savings (under approximately $100k), uncomplicated family structure
Fabric’s free will is the right starting point. Complete the will today, name a guardian, sign it with two witnesses within 48 hours, store it somewhere accessible. Revisit in 12-18 months as assets grow. If Fabric’s free tier confirms POA and healthcare directive, this is a surprisingly complete plan for this life stage.
Tier 2 — Homeowner, straightforward family Profile: own a primary residence, one or two kids, both biological parents, no prior marriages or stepchildren
Trust & Will’s $299 couple Will Plan covers the full scope — will, guardian nomination, durable POA, and healthcare directive in one session. The $49/year membership fee after year one is worth it to keep documents updatable as life changes. This is the tier where paying $299 once beats the risk of a POA gap.
Tier 3 — Real estate + probate avoidance, or blended family Profile: own real property, significant brokerage accounts, want assets to transfer without probate, or have stepchildren and complex beneficiary structure
Trust & Will’s Trust Plan at $599 couple, or a local estate-planning attorney. Blended families with stepchildren should prioritize an attorney over any online tool — the edge cases that online templates miss are precisely where blended-family situations create problems.
Tier 4 — High net worth, business ownership, multi-state Profile: assets over approximately $1 million, own a business, hold real estate in multiple states, complex beneficiaries
An estate-planning attorney, full stop. Online tools are not adequate at this complexity level regardless of which one is chosen.
Ethos/Tomorrow sits in the same tier as Fabric for functional purposes — free, basic, legitimate for simple situations — but carries an insurance-first business model that may generate more aggressive cross-selling pressure. Parents who prefer a tool not optimized around policy sales will find Fabric the cleaner choice in Tier 1.
For parents thinking beyond the will toward long-term wealth transfer and legacy giving, a best donor-advised fund for charitable giving becomes relevant once the estate foundation is in place.
What Estate-Planning Attorneys Say About Online Wills
The attorney community’s view on online estate tools is more nuanced than the typical “just hire an attorney” response suggests.
The balanced practitioner position from r/EstatePlanning: “Online solutions can produce good outcomes or bad outcomes, just as lawyers can. A DIY provider can be better than a cheap lawyer and comparable to a middling lawyer.”
The concern isn’t primarily about errors — it’s about omissions. As one estate attorney put it: “Guardianship of minor children is not something I would trust to cheap online or free. Good lawyers have will sections up to date with the law and carefully crafted based on things that have gone wrong before.” The issue is that a technically valid document can still miss situation-specific provisions — most commonly, a testamentary trust for minors that specifies who controls a child’s inheritance and at what age they receive it outright.
Another practitioner framed the diagnostic challenge clearly: “The problem isn’t just ambiguity — it’s not knowing what you don’t know. It takes a lot of skill to know a simple will is sufficient.”
On the specific question of having an attorney review an online will: the practitioner consensus is to skip it. “Don’t bother paying an attorney to review Trust & Will. A good attorney will either refuse or charge more than if you paid the attorney to do it right the first time.” Trust & Will’s $299/year attorney call is a general orientation session, not a document review.
The practitioner critique is valid for complex estates. It overstates the case for simple ones. For a 30-year-old parent with a rental apartment, a Roth IRA, and a newborn — no real estate, no blended family, no business interests — a signed Fabric will naming a guardian is a legitimate plan for this life stage. The more pressing failure mode isn’t choosing the wrong tool; it’s not choosing any tool at all.
Family expansion (birth, marriage) is the third most common reason Americans create wills and trusts, according to Caring.com’s 2025 research. The window when motivation peaks is narrow. Using that window matters more than optimizing for the perfect instrument.
For parents who want professional guidance rather than a DIY tool, a comparison of financial planning services that cover estate planning covers advisors who include estate review in their scope of work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Fabric’s free will legally valid?
Yes. Fabric’s will is state-specific and valid in all 50 states when properly signed and witnessed. Nearly all states require two adult witnesses; Louisiana additionally requires notarization. Legal validity depends on proper execution, not on what the tool cost. A free will signed with two witnesses is legally equivalent to a paid will signed the same way.
Does Fabric’s free will include POA and healthcare directive?
Verify at meetfabric.com before relying on these documents. Most 2026 sources indicate the free tier includes a financial POA, healthcare directive, and HIPAA authorization alongside the will — but at least one source disagreed on scope. If included, Fabric’s free offering is more complete than many paid alternatives. If not included, there’s a meaningful incapacity gap: an injured-but-alive parent would have no one legally authorized to manage finances or medical decisions without a POA.
What does Trust & Will cost for a couple with kids in 2026?
The Will Plan is $299 for a couple — covering wills, guardian nominations, durable POA, healthcare directive, and HIPAA authorization. The Trust Plan is $599 for a couple and adds a revocable living trust for probate avoidance. After year one, a $49/year membership covers document updates and vault access; a $299/year add-on provides limited attorney support (not available in all states). Verify current pricing at trustandwill.com/compare before purchasing.
Is Tomorrow (tomorrow.me) still operating in 2026?
Tomorrow is no longer an independent service. Ethos Life acquired it in January 2022, and tomorrow.me now redirects to Ethos’s estate product. A free will and guardian nomination still exist under Ethos’s branding, but the service operates as part of an insurance company’s product ecosystem rather than as a standalone estate tool.
Which service names a guardian the fastest?
All three complete the online process in under 20 minutes. The actual bottleneck is the legal signing — two witnesses are required for the document to have legal effect. The fastest realistic path is completing Fabric’s free will in one sitting, then signing it with two witnesses within 48 hours. A guardian nomination has no legal effect until the will is properly executed.
At what point does the free option stop being enough?
Free tools are adequate for renters with modest savings, no real estate, and a straightforward family structure. The free option is insufficient when: a family owns real estate (where trust-based probate avoidance becomes relevant), has significant brokerage or business assets, includes stepchildren or complex beneficiaries, or holds assets across multiple states. At that point, Trust & Will’s Trust Plan ($599 couple) is the minimum, and an attorney is the right call for blended families. Full attorney estate plans run approximately $1,500-$2,000 in lower cost-of-living markets and $6,000-$9,000 or more in high-cost states like California.
Are online wills as good as attorney-drafted wills?
It depends on the situation. For simple estates with no real estate, no blended family, and modest assets, a good online service can be adequate. The legitimate practitioner concern isn’t errors — it’s omissions: things a user didn’t know to address, like who controls a child’s inheritance and at what age they receive it. Online tools don’t ask those questions unless prompted. For real estate, business interests, blended families, or significant assets, a licensed estate-planning attorney is the appropriate choice. This is not legal advice; consult a licensed estate-planning attorney for circumstances specific to the estate in question.
Name a Guardian This Week
The verdict is straightforward. Fabric is a legitimate free starting point for renters with simple estates — guardian nomination, valid in all 50 states, no credit card. Trust & Will at $299 for a couple is the right upgrade once a family owns a home or has meaningful assets to protect, covering the POA and healthcare directive gaps in one session. Tomorrow is no longer independent; parents who navigate to that service are now on Ethos Life’s platform, and should know that going in.
The action is immediate: open Fabric or Trust & Will, complete the will in a single sitting, then sign it with two witnesses before the week is out. An unsigned will is legally identical to no will. Store the signed document somewhere accessible and set a calendar reminder to review it annually — or whenever a major life event (home purchase, second child, inheritance) changes the picture.
For parents tracking longer-term financial security, setting up finances for your kids early is the natural next step once the estate foundation is in place.
The only truly bad estate plan is the one that stays on the to-do list while a child has no named guardian.
Sources
Caring.com 2025 Wills and Estate Planning Study (YouGov, 2,500+ US adults) for will-ownership statistics; GeekWire for the Ethos Life acquisition of Tomorrow (January 2022). Trust & Will pricing and plan scope per trustandwill.com and CNBC Select (as of 2026 — verify at source). Fabric free-tier document scope per meetfabric.com (verify current scope at source). Online-will execution requirements (witnesses, notarization, self-proving affidavit) per FreeWill/Policygenius explainers. Attorney cost ranges and practitioner commentary sourced from r/EstatePlanning community discussions; no usernames referenced. Not legal advice — requirements vary by state; consult a licensed estate-planning attorney.
