Coronavirus concerns are promoting financial advisors and their clients to get wills and estate plans drafted. Across the United States, advisors have been requesting law firms to prepare wills, trusts, and other estate planning documents on an emergency and remote basis. These documents are tending to be for those unable to travel or who happen to be critically ill.
This is all happening while many businesses, including law firms, have moved to working remotely. Luckily, many are able to stay connected remotely thanks to their investment in technology.
The ability to connect without having to directly interact with other individuals has become crucial during the coronavirus crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called for “social distancing” and many employers have encouraged those who can work from home to do so, in order to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Lawyers who can connect with advisors and can exchange documents electronically are seeing an increasing in business nationwide.
The spread of the diseases has created unique estate planning and legal challenges across the globe, particularly given the volatility of the financial markets.
Peak Trust just announced a complimentary webinar March 19th presented by Jonathan Blattmachr, Martin Shenkman and Barron Henly. The program explores steps to consider. Health issues are no doubt of paramount importance for a practice. This includes: What steps are some firms taking to protect staff and clients? How and what might you communicate to clients? How can technology help you continue to practice in the current environment?
A rush to make wills and estate plans during or following a national/international crisis is by no means unprecedented. There was a similar rush to make wills following the September 11th attacks.
The coronavirus was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and has sickened over 187,100 people in at least 140 countries, according to official counts from the New York Times. As of Tuesday afternoon, a least 7,490 people have died of the disease, more than half of them outside mainland China.
