The Coronavirus has had severe effects on many businesses, but not all of them. Some law firms are reporting an increase in online estate planning and wills.
"It's never a good time to panic. and I think now is a fantastic time to plan. Many of us are home, and we have time. We are thinking about these things already, our mortality and our health," said Nicole Harvey who is an attorney at Blanchard, Krasner, & French.
With the Coronavirus pandemic, health and related issues seem to be on everybody's minds right now. That includes attorneys. Harvey says she has seen a 50 percent increase in online estate planning and wills over the last several weeks. "I definitely have seen an increase in people who are concerned about if they become very sick or incapacitated or pass away," said Harvey.
One of the attractive parts of having online estate planning is the online aspect. This goes along with CDC recommendations on social distancing and self-isolation. "Typically with an estate plan signing, there may be five to seven people in a room. By doing this remotely you can stay in your home, observe all the social distancing rules, and not be at any risk of passing on or receiving this virus from anyone else," said Harvey.
Harvey says to get the ball rolling, the client has to contact the firm, whether it be email,message, or phone. But no in-person meeting needs to happen. "We use Zoom, Skype,and other platforms that clients are familiar with, in a video conference. Using those sorts of tools, we can review documents with them live over the internet. Once documents are prepared, we turn them into PDFs," said Harvey.
There's a lot of documents involved, including Power of Attorney and Healthcare Directives. "A Healthcare Power of Attorney is a typical part of an estate plan. I think in today's environment its probably the most critical. That's where we have an opportunity to make decisions about our end-of-life care," said Harvey.
Once documents are prepared they need to be signed and notarized. But that doesn't have to be in person either. "We have electronic notaries who are allowed to notarize anything they can notarize in person. We specifically have electronic wills that are allowed to be signed and notarized by an electronic notary," said Harvey.
Harvey says Nevada has been allowing online wills since 2001. It's one of the few states that does.
