Remote Wills - Potential Issues for Contentious Probate Practitioners - Webinar

Introduction

Since the pandemic started in the UK, there has been a significant increase in the number of people wishing to make wills.

Social distancing and self-isolation measures created difficulties for testators when it came to complying with the formalities of s.9 of the Wills Act 1837, leading to a range of inventive approaches to making socially distant wills and considerable debate around the question of whether the existing law permitted the remote witnessing of wills via the use of technology.

Around the world, many English-speaking jurisdictions, including New York, Ontario, New Zealand and the Australian states, speedily introduced measures expressly permitting remote witnessing via the use of video conferencing technology.

In July 2020, it was announced that similar measures would be introduced in England and Wales and the Wills Act 1837 (Electronic Communications) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Order 2020 was introduced on 28 September 2020, with retrospective effect to 31 January 2020.

This new webinar will look at the issues that are likely to arise from attempts to make remote wills, from the perspective of the contentious probate practitioner.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will cover the following:

• Pre-reform remotely witnessed wills - did the existing law already permit remote witnessing?
• The Wills Act 1837 (Electronic Communications) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Order 2020:
• Requirements
• Temporal effect
• Saving provisions - challenging grants on the basis of attempted remote wills made during the retrospectivity period
• Areas of heightened risk likely to give rise to validity challenges:
• Technology glitches, witnessing lapses and loss of the travelling will
• Assessing capacity
• Undue influence and lack of knowledge and approval
• Fraud, including technologically mediated fraud and ‘deep fake’ technology
• Witness interference
• What next for will reform, further changes on the horizon?