Legal Wills

I have spent most of my working life in the financial services industry. I have seen so many of my clients dying without creating a will. My goal is to empower women. I had written an article on why you need a will. I talk to Tim Hewson from Legal Wills who answers all my questions and how simple and easy it is to create a will.

What is legalwills.ca all about?

The company started in 2001 when my co-founder and I were having after-work drinks with 15 colleagues, and one brought up the topic of Will writing. This person was a well-paid professional, married with children, owned a house, and knew that they needed a Will, but they didn’t have one. We went around the table and not one single person had a Will, and every single person knew that they probably should have one. There was a clear disconnect between the need, and the options available. So, we decided to investigate further. We realized there was an opportunity to make Will writing accessible and affordable, so we worked with some estate planning lawyers to create the service. Our mission is to remove the barriers to Will writing. We know that even today around 65 percent of Canadian adults do not have a Will, but it is the most important document you will ever write. Since launching, over half a million Canadians have used our service.

What are the advantages of using you?

It’s not all about cost (although we are about ninety percent cheaper than an estate planning lawyer). We are much more convenient, not only to create your Will but also to update it. If you are a professional couple with young children, it is extremely difficult to coordinate schedules to meet with an attorney and arrange childcare. Using our service, you can put the kids to bed, put your feet up, and step through our service. You may be asked questions that need a consultation with family members, like Executor and Guardians. You can just save your work, and return at any time when you are ready. If you need to make changes in the future, you can just log in to your account and update your Will.

But the Internet also allows us to do amazing things that aren’t supported at all by traditional Will writing methods. We have a “keyholder” system that allows you to name trusted individuals to access pieces of information after you have passed away, and not before. We allow you to document your assets in a “LifeLocker” which helps your Executor administer your estate. You can upload files to a digital vault, you can even write messages to be distributed after you have passed away. This is moving way beyond simple Will writing, and offering a complete portfolio of services that ensures that the right assets and information get to the right people at the right time.

Please tell my audience why we need a will and what are the advantages of having a will?

Having no Will never works as a strategy no matter what your situation. The most common misconception is that if you die, everything will automatically pass to your spouse. This is in fact only true in 3 Provinces, and Ontario is not one of them. In addition, if you are living common-law and don’t have a Will, your partner is entitled to no part of your estate whatsoever; everything passes to children, parents, and siblings in that order. There is no provision in intestate law (dying without a Will) for unmarried couples.

Some people claim that they don’t need a Will because they have no assets; which would make sense if you planned on dying this afternoon, but you have absolutely no way of knowing what you estate will be worth when your Will comes into effect. Your death could be a result of a terrible accident with somebody held liable; you could be worth much more after you have died than you ever were alive, and that’s just one example. But aside from the asset distribution, it puts somebody in charge. You name an Executor who has the responsibility to gather and secure your assets and then distribute them according to your instructions. Without a Will, your loved ones are left with uncertainty, chaos, and anguish. If you have young children, a Will allows you to name a guardian. Without one, a judge will make this appointment without knowing anything about any of your friends or family members.

Writing a Will is not about you, it’s about the people you leave behind; the people that you care for during your lifetime. It really takes 20-30 minutes to write a Will and can save your loved one’s months of uncertainty and acrimony.

Walk me through the process of how I go about doing a will. Do I get to talk to a lawyer?

If you prepare a Will with a lawyer, the chances are they will use Will creation software to prepare the document. Not many lawyers start with a blank sheet of paper and start typing. There are well established legal precedents that form the Will clauses to go into a well-drafted Will. We use that same software, but we’ve put a user-friendly front-end to it. The final result is usually word-for-word identical to a lawyer’s Will, but we are simply asking questions about your family situation, key appointments (Executor and Guardians), distribution of your estate, as well as other things like charitable bequests or pet trusts. You step through the service rather like using tax preparation software, through ten sections. In the end, we compile the document, and you download it as a PDF file. You should then print it and sign it in the presence of two witnesses to make it a legal Last Will and Testament. The whole process takes about 20-30 minutes, but you can save your work if you get stuck, and take as long as you wish.

Talk to me about the costs involved?

Our Will service costs $39.95 plus tax. This allows you to create your Will and you have up to one year to make unlimited updates. We also have a financial Power of Attorney ($29.95) and a Living Will ($19.95) service. If you choose not to maintain an account with us after the first year, your initial payment is all you will ever pay. We do not keep credit card details on file and cannot automatically charge beyond this initial payment.

You can if you wish to choose to store your documents online for longer than a year which will make it easier to make updates in the future to reflect any changes in your personal or financial situation (rather than returning to a lawyer each time). This is, of course, optional, but it does make the process of maintaining your document more convenient. $11.95 will give you one additional year of updates, or you can purchase multiple years e.g. 5 years at $24.95, 10 years at $34.95, 25 years at $74.95 ($3 per year). This payment would apply to all of the services that are enabled on your account.

My final comment would be to encourage your readers to give it a try. Getting on the website and starting is the biggest hurdle, but the sense of satisfaction in completing a Will is enormous. Most people know that writing a Will is important, but it never makes it to the top of the ToDo list. Many people who use our service come to us because they’ve experienced a loved one dying without a Will. They say “I would never want to put anybody through what I’ve just been through”. Writing a Will is just the right thing to do for your loved ones.

Photo Credits: Sandy Millar on Unsplash,