Paper is Still the Gold Standard

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You're on your deathbed and still of sound mind. Your estate is to be evenly split between your son and daughter, but Jack has never come around to see you while Jill has not only visited you daily but handled all the day-to-day minutiae of your finances and running your household.

You now want to leave everything to Jill, but there may not be time to get a lawyer to change your will. Surely it must be better to record a selfie on your smartphone rather than scrawl a note on a piece of paper. But that would be wrong.[bold added]

While most of the business of life has gone digital, estate law remains rooted to ink on paper. Americans who try to phone in or record their estate plans don’t realize that video and audio recordings don’t qualify...

Aside from audio and video, some states will allow an electronic will. But a paper will, drafted by a lawyer, and signed by you with a “wet signature,” witnessed and notarized, is still the gold standard.

If you insist on putting your final wishes on video, it behooves you to have a printer nearby. You can transcribe your speech using any number of programs and print the text. Make corrections by hand, and sign and date the final product. Et voilà! A piece of paper that should hold up in court with the bonus of having made a video that will add authenticity to the change in the will.

Estate law will undoubtedly catch up to technology in a decade or so, but many of us boomers won't be able to wait that long...