Let me start this article by saying that we believe everybody should have a Will. I have a Will, I wrote my first Will when I was 30 years old before I was married and before I had children.
A Will is a key document that should be in everybody’s drawer. It is not a once-in-a-lifetime task. You write a Will as soon as you are an adult, and then you should update it throughout your life as your personal and financial circumstances change.
credit: 123rfBut the reality is that most people don’t have a Will. Traditionally, the process has been expensive and inconvenient. It just doesn’t make it to the top of the To-Do list. Survey after survey shows that about 65% of Canadian adults do not have an up-to-date Will in place.
But in our 20 years of offering our services, we have seen key triggers for Will writing. Every year, the first week of January is a busy one for us, as people make New Year’s Resolutions and commit to getting their affairs in order.
Tax time can also be a busy one for us, when people are thinking about their finances and their assets. Often, their accountant will prompt them explaining that a Will is the most important document you will ever write, and it should be in everybody’s filing cabinet.
There are also personal situation like before going on a trip, having a child, getting married, or going into surgery. One of the most common times people create a Will is after dealing with a parent who died without a Will. The family then come to us explaining that they would never want to put anybody through what they just went through dealing with an estate with no Will in place.
But in our 20 years we have never seen interest in estate planning like the traffic to our service throughout the COVID pandemic. The feedback we receive is not necessarily that people feel that they will die, but certainly that people feel their affairs should be in order.
Which brings us to our education workers. There is an extremely political debate raging on whether or not our children should return to the classrooms in September. Many governments are mandating that our education workers must return to our schools. This is making many teachers and support staff think about their estate planning documents.
We don’t want to get involved in the political discussion, but we do know that many teachers are turning to our services at this time. We don’t think that education workers should be forced to pay $600 to $1,000 to create a Will with a lawyer at this time. It’s just not fair.
We have decided to make our Will and Living Will services free for education workers, just to help them out if they feel that now is the right time for estate planning.
We are not discounting the service and we are not just offering a promotion to make money out of this situation. We are offering the services free of charge, including our support services.
As a father of two children, I appreciate everything that our education workers do. If we can help them at this time, we will.
If you qualify, please go to
https://www.legalwills.ca/education
to take advantage of the offer.
Tim Hewson is one of the founders of LegalWills.ca.
He has over 20 years of experience helping people to write their Will and other estate planning documents. He has been interviewed by many of the major news media outlets including CTV, Global News, The Toronto Star, and other leading Canadian publications. He has also contributed to a number of financial planning books.
Throughout his career, Tim has written extensively on the subject of Will writing and estate planning.
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