At the 2018 University of Miami’s Heckerling Institute, there was a panel that talked about the future of estate planning. The following will summarize some points raised during the panel’s discussion.
Some states (e.g. Florida) are allowing e-notarization of legal documents. This is not in widespread use yet (and is not accepted in Massachusetts at this time).
The panel discussed the status of electronic wills. An electronic will is a record (information) that is created and signed electronically and is retrievable in electronic form (we are not talking about a PDF of an original signed paper one). Each state will likely (over the coming years) enact laws dealing with electronic wills. Indiana has a statute going into effect in July 2018 allowing it. In addition, a bill was introduced in New Hampshire – so we may see something there soon.
A big issue with electronic wills is how to ensure that the will is not altered. Blockchains (which are a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography) are being considered since they are supposedly inherently resistant to modification of data. The idea is that you can never go back and change what you did. You can only make changes by doing a new document.
