Episode 53 - The Best Way to Simplify Your Will-Making Process with Tim Hewson
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In today's episode, Nicole speaks with Tim Hewson, co-founder of LegalWills, about the rise of online wills and their impact on estate planning. They discuss how technology is making wills more accessible, secure, and affordable, while also addressing common barriers and misconceptions. The conversation covers the benefits and limitations of online will services, the role of AI, and the growing trend of charitable giving through wills. Listeners gain practical insights into modern estate planning and the importance of thoughtful legacy decisions.
Nicole Garton 00:00:02 Hello and welcome to Your Estate Matters, presented by Heritage Trust. Your Estate Matters is a podcast dedicated to everything estates, including building and preserving your legacy. If it's estate related, we'll be talking about it. We're having the conversations today that will help Canadians protect their families, their assets and their legacies tomorrow.
Welcome to your estate Matters. I'm your host, Nicole Garton. Today, we're taking an investigative look into one of the most disruptive shifts in estate planning online wills. Our guests, Tim Hewson, co-founded LegalWills in 2001, when the very idea of writing a will online was considered radical. Two decades later, his company has processed over half a million wills across four countries. In this conversation, we're not asking just how online wills work. We're also asking tougher questions who do they serve well and who could be at risk? How secure are they? And what happens when fraud or errors occur? And as AI enters the picture, what does the future of estate planning look like?
Okay, so why don't we jump in? So I understand you started in 2001. Is that right?
Tim Hewson 00:01:21 That is correct. Yeah.
Nicole Garton 00:01:22 Great. You know, back in 2001, this was like quite revolutionary. What gave you the idea to start an online will service when most people thought of, you know, getting a well done is going to see a traditional lawyer or notary and doing it in paper. Tell me what the genesis was of it.
Tim Hewson 00:01:38 Yeah, it was, we were working in high tech, myself and my co-founder, and we used to regularly go out for after work drinks. And one week we went out. It was Friday evening, and a group of us were sitting around the table and somebody mentioned that they didn't have a will And it started a whole discussion and we were all professionals. We had families, we had assets and jobs, and we went around the table and there were 15 people around the table, and not one single person around the table had a will. Wow. So that immediately got us thinking that that seems to be a broken system. We all knew it was important.
Tim Hewson 00:02:23 We all knew it was vital. Yet not one single person around the table had got it done. And it wasn't necessarily a pricing issue. For whatever reason, it hadn't got to the top of the to do list. So we set about investigating that and looking into what those barriers were and seeing if we could address those barriers.
Nicole Garton 00:02:39 Great. And well, let's talk about that. So the estimate is half of Canadians approximately have no will at all. Are you familiar with that data as well?
Tim Hewson 00:02:51 Yeah. I mean we've done a one survey. We think it's 65% of Canadian adults don't have a will, and of those that do. Of that, 35, 12% have wildly out of date wills that don't reflect their current wishes. So you end up with like 23% of Canadian adults happy that they have a will that truly reflects their current state.
Nicole Garton 00:03:14 So let's talk about that because we know it's important. You know, particularly once we hit midlife. A lot of us have people we're responsible for. We've worked hard.
Nicole Garton 00:03:24 We've built some assets. We know it's something we need to do. Why do you think people don't have it done?
Tim Hewson 00:03:31 So I have an opinion. You probably have your own opinion. There are key reasons. One of them is a sense that I don't need one yet. I'll do it sometime in the future. A perception that you're going to do this once in your lifetime. So you should probably wait. People feel they should wait until they get married or they move, or they have their second child, or they get the new job, or they they're waiting for a moment in their life because they don't want to have to go through the process more than once. So there's a number of reasons. Misconceptions are many people feel it's obvious what's going to happen anyway. They don't even need a will. It's obviously just all gonna pass to my spouse or partner. So there's a lot of misconceptions around what happens if you don't have a will. And then there's some people, there's a group who just find the whole subject matter kind of morbid.
Tim Hewson 00:04:25 They don't they don't want to even think about death. But I think the other ones are. It's perceived as an expensive thing to do, and it can usually wait. So there's a multitude of reasons and there's some of the reasons, some of the barriers that we try to address.
Nicole Garton 00:04:40 So I think you're absolutely right. Like from being an estate planning lawyer for many years. Absolutely. All the things that you've mentioned are the case. I also think Humans just naturally procrastinate on things we know we're supposed to do. You know, we need to get our car service to our teeth cleaned or whatever. I think it's the natural thing to deal with the immediate and the urgent, rather the important. And I think the other thing I notice people is perfection, paralysis and that they know it's important. And so they keep researching, making sure they want to go to the right person. They want to make sure they do it exactly right. And then unfortunately, that's a barrier to them getting it done at all.
Nicole Garton 00:05:21 So that's I think all of those things are a factor and people not having basic planning done.
Tim Hewson 00:05:28 But I can't say that like statistically in our 25 years, our busiest week of the year is the first week of January. It has been every single year that we've run the business.
Nicole Garton 00:05:38 So isn't that interesting?
Tim Hewson 00:05:39 Yeah, yeah. In my opinion, there are two key reasons for that. One is New Year's resolutions. This is the year I'm finally going to get it done. I know I've been putting it off. They commit to doing it and they do it in that first week. But the other one is that it is a time where people get together with family, and these conversations can come up and people can talk about, did he hear about Uncle Joe? He died without a will. What a disaster that was. Also, conversations with parents at that time saying, Mom and Dad, do you have these things in place? They're important. So families do get together. But there is a New Year's resolution factor as well.
Nicole Garton 00:06:15 Yes, absolutely. When I was practicing well in estates and family law, early January was also the highest intake for divorce. New divorce files to. So I guess people are like, you know, I need to get my state plan done, or maybe I just need to restructure my family after the holidays. I don't know, it seems to be an inflection point where people are thinking about things globally. So I think let's talk about because you provide a very valuable and accessible service. And I think we talk about, you know, if it is 65% of people walking down the street that haven't done it. Like, do you want to talk to our listeners about what are the consequences of Uncle Joe not having a will? Like, what does that mean? If he dies unexpectedly and or becomes incapable unexpectedly, what happens to Uncle Joe's assets and the people that have to deal with it? If he's done no planning.
Tim Hewson 00:07:11 So I see that as two significant factors is firstly, nobody is appointed to take responsibility for what's going to happen.
Tim Hewson 00:07:21 So that actually one of the key issues is not having an executor. And we find in what we hear from people who are using our service is. And another point related to that is a lot of people who come to us are people who've just dealt with an estate where there was no will, and people say, I am never going to put my family through what we've just been through, so I'm going to get mine done. And then they were able to share what the nightmare was of Uncle Joe dying without a will. And first off, it's not putting anybody in charge. So nobody has responsibility for gathering and securing assets. And we do find that when there's no will and potentially verbal promises have been made to family members, then sister or brother goes into the house. They start helping themselves to things. They have a right to them and it's chaos. So that's the first part. There's it's a lack of making those appointments. So there's chaos because nobody two of the things can happen either. Multiple people can step up and say, I want to take charge or nobody step up and nobody's taking charge.
Tim Hewson 00:08:29 So both of those scenarios can happen. Related to that is not naming guardians for children, right? Is that you can do that. That's an important part of the will. If you die and you have young children and you haven't named guardians for them, Then a judge is going to make that appointment for you. And we have found when people step through our service, that one of the points through the service where people stop and pause and save their work is that question of guardianship. It's a really. Oftentimes it can be a difficult appointment to make, because it might not be the most obvious person who expects to have that role. You might not want it to be that person. There's a lot of emotion involved in that appointment. And so that's another reason, like what would happen if you had young children and didn't have a will. You don't have any say in that appointment. But to your point, the distribution of the assets as well. So we actually see our wills as real opportunity for people to not only say everything to my spouse if we're involved in an accident divided between my children.
Tim Hewson 00:09:39 Yeah, you can do that. But you can also be a bit creative. You can have charitable bequests. Plan giving is a very important part of our wills service. Make a difference to your community or even you may have cherished items that belong with a particular person, so you're able to be thoughtful and considerate around where you want and how you want your assets to be distributed. So it happens a lot more smoothly if you have a will. And secondly, if you don't have a will, then we know it's going to be intestate law. Every province is different, and I don't really know of anybody who's written their will intentionally. That replicates an intestate distribution. It doesn't. It's not a great distribution plan. And no matter which province you go to. So that's one of the consequences, is not having control over meaningful assets or being able to do something significant with your legacy.
Nicole Garton 00:10:42 Great answers. So take me back to 2001. So you're a bunch of tech professionals, so let's say outsiders of the traditional, you know, wills and estates professional group.
Nicole Garton 00:10:54 You realize that there's a huge access to justice issue and a huge number of people aren't getting served. So you want to jump in and provide this innovative, accessible service. I can only imagine there were raised eyebrows and or some resistance. So do you want to tell me about that? What was that like back in 2001, when you first on the scene and said you were going to offer online wills like that was probably a bold, eyebrow raising thing. Did you experience pushback from the law societies? How did traditional practitioners feel about you?
Tim Hewson 00:11:31 Yeah, so I think we should paint the picture a little bit. I don't sure we like blasted out of the traps. It wasn't like we launched in, you know, a thousand people a day were using our service. That that's not quite how it panned out, but I think it's worth exploring the state of the market at that time. So there was a will kit that you could buy, the Canadian legal kit. It was advertised on TV a lot.
Tim Hewson 00:11:56 It was a blank form kit. So that existed and that was a way of doing it yourself. If you want to divide a will, they're not great, they're not good. But we know that. We know that a blank form, well, kit is not a very good way to prepare your will. There was also back then software that you could buy on a CD. So there were no Lo was a company in the US who were innovators in this area. So we weren't the first company to come up with this concept of putting a will service on a computer. We weren't, but we were certainly one of the first to put it on the internet and allow people to access it. So what was the reaction? Well, absolutely. It was varied, right? Some people would say it would. Immediately we went to lawyers to talk to them and some would say, no, it's impossible. It can't be done. But it didn't take long to find lawyers who said, yeah, this should definitely be something.
Tim Hewson 00:12:53 And we worked with some like minded individuals who were Wills and the state's lawyers at that time and, who helped us to create the first service.
Nicole Garton 00:13:04 Now, I think you still can buy those kits, like I think in BC Self Council Trust does that. And I believe you can still buy them like at staples or the drugstore often. And you know as a lawyer that probated many wills when you got those will kits, it was you know sometimes it was okay if, you know, it was clearly written and the estate was relatively simple, but a lot of the time it unfortunately created a lot of complexity and or errors. And so the presumptive savings, I guess, of them not seeing a lawyer or notary was certainly paid much more on the other end in terms of a probate, in terms of legal fees to fix it, expense delay. So you're right, like those the kits unfortunately generally can cause more problems than they help, particularly if there's any complexity with the family. Do you still see that or.
Tim Hewson 00:14:05 Yeah. So I would say one of our biggest perception challenges over the years has been separating us from a do it yourself WellCare. So we don't we don't regard ourselves as a do it yourself wheel kit. And for anybody who hasn't seen our service like I could maybe like give a give an idea but it's sure it's interactive but you step through it. First question you answer is where are you? Right. A do it yourself work. It is typically not provincially specific to start with. In fact, you can go on Amazon and buy a US kit, and there's nothing to let you know that it's not applicable to your needs. So when you step through our service, first off, you're going to say what your family situation is, whether you have children and if you have young children, and then that's going to direct you through the service to say you have minor children, you're going to need to name guardians for them. You're going to have to set up a trust for a young beneficiary. It very much guides you through the process rather than and what we found.
Tim Hewson 00:15:05 What you can see from a blank form will kit is it's literally a blank sheet of paper. Oftentimes it will say, well, what do you want to happen to all your things? You can get to the end. And one of the mistakes that people make is they start to complete those kits by trying to list everything they own, list all of their assets, walk around the house and write everything down. I've seen that, and I've also seen people not have any contingency plans. Backup plans aren't written into a blank form kit. Our services can't not have a circumstance that is not covered. Like if. What if this person pre-deceased you? Then what? And what if that person predeceased? We guide you through every permutation of what can possibly happen. So we're quite wildly different from a do it yourself will kit. And it's been frustration for us, or certainly one of our missions is to separate ourselves from a blank form kit because we're an interactive piece of software.
Nicole Garton 00:16:03 So in retrospect, what do you think's been harder to do in terms of building trust? Is it? Has it been the general public or has it been other professionals that work in this area?
Tim Hewson 00:16:15 I would say neither has been easy.
Tim Hewson 00:16:18 And, certainly, you know, if you think launching in 2001, asking people to type in their personal information onto a website that was probably ahead of its time. People weren't quite ready for it. Subsequent to that, we saw tax software come online. People initially were a little bit cautious about that, but it's become the de facto way of filing taxes using online tax software. But it's taken us a long time on the personal trust side to build up word of mouth. Third party reviews. Trustpilot reviews. Google reviews. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of five star reviews across all independent review platforms, so that took a while. When you launch a service and you have two reviews, it's challenging, so you have to build that and you can only build that by really engaging with customers, providing good quality customer service, answering the questions and building that so that at the end of it, and if you look at the reviews, people don't just give us stars, they share their experience of using the service and they usually say or often say at the end of it.
Tim Hewson 00:17:27 And I've recommended you to all of my friends and family. That takes a long time to build. And on the legal community side, I think that it's, took a while. What we found that was when we were the only service provider, were trying to convince the world that it's a good option with other service providers coming online. We're not the only voice out there, but that actually helps. And what we have found in recent times is we have now seen Law Society of Ontario, BC Law Society looking at our service, endorsing it. We actually have Law Society of Ontario stamp on the on the home page. They regard us as a credible, viable option for people who are looking to prepare their will. That didn't happen out the gate. That took 20 years.
Nicole Garton 00:18:19 It takes a long time. Let's talk about issues that people might be worried about. So one of the things about. Technology is there's absolutely been the democratization of services and information, but it's also, unfortunately facilitated fraud and identity theft.
Nicole Garton 00:18:38 Like, how do you make sure that Bob Smith, who's done his will, is the Bob Smith that he's purporting to be like, what are the checks and balances to make sure people aren't creating wills for other people?
Tim Hewson 00:18:55 Like any will, there's a signing process, right? Like there's a signing process in the presence of witnesses. Kind of opening this up to a bit of a pet peeve of mine is the slow adoption of technology and electronic signing and electronic storage of wills, which to me is infinitely a better way for somebody to establish their identity. If you look at our electronic signing and storage service. It comes with a video recording of the signing session. It comes with a security trace of that signing session. And, when people talk about, you know, the security vulnerability of a video. Will, for example. I think it overlooks the lack of security of a scratched ink signature, which was probably the best way to prove your identity in 1837. I don't think it is in 2025.
Tim Hewson 00:19:51 So with our service, the same way as most other wills currently in most jurisdictions, the person has to sign it in the presence of two witnesses, and if there's a suspicion of fraud going on, there would be a challenge. And they somebody would have to investigate the signature and get witness testimonies. That's the same using our service as it would be with any other will. I'm hoping that, the legal community and we know in Canada B.C. has adopted it. Other provinces are kind of dragging their feet a little bit, but I'm hoping that we can do a little bit better there with allowing technology to help us in establishing or protecting against fraud.
Nicole Garton 00:20:34 So when do you mean this is adopted? And are you are you referring to digital signing of documents?
Tim Hewson 00:20:39 Yeah. Electronic signing and storage.
Nicole Garton 00:20:41 Right. So B.C. brought that legislation in, I think, at the outset of Covid and that legislation has continued. It's interesting though I don't actually know.
Tim Hewson 00:20:53 They brought in remote signing.
Nicole Garton 00:20:55 Remote signing. That's what I meant.
Tim Hewson 00:20:56 Yeah, but not electronic.
Tim Hewson 00:21:00 After Covid, they brought in an electronic signing of a document and our service allows literally the witnesses, they have a sign signing pad on their phone. They sign the signing pad on their phone that is then embedded into the document, which is then electronically stored, which is a major step forward like we had remote witnessing where you either sign it and then courier it to your witnesses who sign it round robin and send it back to you. Or everybody signs the second one and staples it together. There's just Fuji.
Nicole Garton 00:21:30 Fuji. I like the word okay. Right. So it's funny because I, I think I did a few of those really in the height of Covid. And it's not common though that remote signing it is. You're right. The logistics are a little bit awkward in terms of having to be online and video and then sort of scan it back and forth and then collate it into one document. It's not the most user friendly process.
Tim Hewson 00:21:56 Maybe not the way you've done it. It is the way we've done it. Okay, great. And it's and it's an interesting point about online platforms where we are, we're the very quick to adopt new technologies. We work with a company called Syngraphy who do electronic personal verification of people. And you set up. It's not a DocuSign. It's not a zoom call. You set up your own virtual signing room, and it's super straightforward and super secure. And the end result is a packaged up electronic package of the will, the video of the signing session and the digital security trace.
Nicole Garton 00:22:35 So, you know, other industries are implementing this. I know certainly in for real estate like at Heritage Trust, we sell a lot of properties. And in terms of ID, there's a lot of really innovative services they're using now to basically make sure we are who we say we are. So yeah, it is. It seems like it's getting more sophisticated and smooth in terms of being convenient, accessible, but also meeting the security standards.
Tim Hewson 00:23:00 And I think it comes like the other part of that chain, and is when you then store the document, right, you then store the document electronically, securely. So if there is a natural disaster Master and the will can't be found. House fire. The will can't be found. It doesn't really. Our best option is not a piece of paper that could be 30 years old in a filing cabinet. So, you know, there are things that we should be doing to modernize that process.
Nicole Garton 00:23:30 So let's talk about the end product. So you've how many wills I think you said was it 500,000. Or how many do you think you've done?
Tim Hewson 00:23:37 Yeah I mean we're so we're in Canada, the US, the UK and now South Africa as well. And yeah, over the years we've done about 500,000 wills. We also do powers of attorney living wills for around about a million documents total.
Nicole Garton 00:23:51 That's a lot of work. So that's amazing that that people are getting served. But people that maybe have more complex estates, maybe it's international or they've got corporate assets, or maybe they're First Nations or they might have disabled beneficiaries.
Nicole Garton 00:24:07 What about people that may have complexity that they aren't even necessarily aware of. Like, you know, have you had difficulty with people after the fact not having the provisions or getting the professional advice that they might have had? I think you make a statement that none of your wills have failed probate, but how would you how would you be able to track that on a million documents?
Tim Hewson 00:24:32 There's a number of different ways to answer this question. So first of all, we're not claiming to be something for everybody. We're not. There is absolutely a role for a Wills and Estates lawyer and an estate planning lawyer. We are nowhere close to being able to encroach on that level of professional expertise. That's not what we do. We have an onboarding process. We ask questions, do you have a child with special needs? We can't help you. Corporate assets is one. We can't help you. we do direct people to lawyers who can. So right. Like initially, there is a filter that our services immediately, not for them.
Tim Hewson 00:25:15 We also find that people step through the service and when they get into it, they realize, oh, I actually my stuff's a little bit more complicated than I thought. I now want to back out of it. And we know this because people pay and then say, you know what? It's more complicated than I thought. I in fact, it's beyond me. It may be I don't even know what I'm doing. I need to speak to somebody. Absolutely. We would 100%. We're. We're not for everybody. We fund the payment. We are directed to somebody who can help you. We do that. So we're not trying to broaden our reach. Particularly, we feel that we're meeting a gap for people who need or will and have. However you want to define that like straightforward situations, a clear understanding of what they want to happen to their assets, would be a good fit for us, in terms of like, how do we know that they work? So I think we'd hear about it.
Tim Hewson 00:26:20 People do let us know. We get reviews. People contact us all day, every day. Our customer service is our single biggest expense in our business. We have had a number of reviews from people saying, my wife had cancer. We wrote the will sadly passed away. Thank you so much for the service. We wouldn't have been able to get a will written had it not been for your service. We've had many of those and you can look on Trustpilot. There are reviews from people who have used our service. We've never once had somebody come to us or even leave a review saying, well, this will didn't work. It's just we don't have it. And as a personal anecdote, my parents both used our service, both passed away and didn't have a problem with them. I've used our service too.
Nicole Garton 00:27:06 So why don't you maybe help us understand? Like who is an ideal fit for an online real service and who should not use the service and should see an estate planning lawyer and or other professional questions?
Tim Hewson 00:27:23 Are there multifaceted questions? Who can use our service? Well, I would say like one group of people who should use our service is people who have procrastinated for ten years and not got around to it.
Tim Hewson 00:27:33 So that would be a good start. Get your will in place, and if you feel that you have extensive assets that could benefit from family trusts, you know, estate planning things, then start to look at that and start to talk to some professionals and find out whether that's a good fit for you. But don't hold off on the will. They get the will written, because it could take you some time to actually get those other items in order. So there's a, Certainly a a time sense. Like, you know, somebody who, believe it or not. Like, we have people saying, you know what? I'm going to surgery at 8:00 tomorrow morning. It's Sunday evening. I can't speak to a lawyer. I need a will before I go into surgery. That happened. We have people who have spent their whole lives procrastinating and finally realized that the barriers aren't there so they can use the service. So there's that group of people. But certainly I see people who are married with young children, and they want everything to go to their spouse.
Tim Hewson 00:28:38 And then something happened to them, divided between the children named guardians for the children that like classic family situation, who don't currently have a good relationship with a lawyer. A lot of people don't have a lawyer that they can just call and go and see and people who want to. Also, there's another element to this is people who want to learn about their will, learn about what a will is, what the process is, what the components are. Some people just like to explore areas themselves, and I think that our service does a really good job of educating people and demystifying the process and introducing people to a lot of new concepts that they otherwise might not have done. And we do find some people who come to our service, even with the possible intention of going to visit a lawyer, but want to better prepare themselves for that visit. Is certainly an option as well, because people do find our process very educational.
Nicole Garton 00:29:34 So I think, you know, from years of being an estate planning lawyer, I might suggest to people, if you've got, you know, an active running business and or significant corporate assets, if you've got a blended family, i.e. there's children that aren't your mutual children, if you've got disabled beneficiaries, if you've got cross-border Or assets.
Nicole Garton 00:30:00 If you've got First Nation status, or if there's a lot of conflict, or if you're going to do something different from what a sort of a standard expectation might be, or someone's going to be mad, i.e., or you're not going to give an equal distribution to kids, or maybe you're going to completely disinherit someone that expects that. Or I think any of those factual scenarios. I think I would say to that, absolutely. Make sure you get proper advice in advance. But you're right. People who you know, first marriage, you know, no big fighting, you know, regular job, you know, house RFPs for that demographic. Certainly a straightforward system would be a good thing. But I think it, you know, there is a checklist of complexity where the cost of not getting advice is unfortunately very high. If you die without doing it.
Tim Hewson 00:30:57 I would say most of those scenarios caveats we cover in our onboarding. There's a couple that you might direct people away that we actually do cover.
Tim Hewson 00:31:09 Like for example, the cross-border. You can actually we do support the ability to prepare a well for US assets while you still have Canadian assets and you're living in Canada. We do offer that option. And interestingly, without an option like ours is actually quite difficult to cover. If you had a condo in Florida, getting a well written for that condo in Florida is actually quite challenging when you're having to work with lawyers across border to make sure that those wills work together. So our service actually does that. But the other ones that you mentioned, I agree with you, and they are part of our onboarding process, onboarding.
Nicole Garton 00:31:47 Okay. So what are you saying to people that it's worse to have no planning at all? Like what do you say to people that are concerned that people might be unaware. From what I'm hearing you say is you've got an onboarding process that basically disqualifies them. Are you also suggesting that people not having any documents that's worse than not getting the advice? What is your position on that?
Tim Hewson 00:32:11 We would never position our services.
Tim Hewson 00:32:14 It's better than nothing. That's not what we do. We like our service. We regard it as. We hear from people all the time who use our service with a view to then subsequently going to a lawyer and going to the lawyer and walking out with a document that's word for word, identical to the one that he prepared using our service. In fact, oftentimes people would say ours was better, more comprehensive, covered more things than the document prepared by a lawyer. So it's certainly not, you know, better off using ours than have nothing at all. No, we do stand by our documents and we believe that they are. We're not giving you legal advice or estate planning advice. But I think one thing to keep in mind when comparing us with walking into a law firm and a law office is there's a very wide range of the kind of services that lawyers are providing from their offices. You can go into a real estate lawyer and ask them for a will. And they're saying, yeah, sure, I'll give it a go.
Tim Hewson 00:33:15 So they're not will as experts, but they might buy a will for you. There are many, many, many lawyers who will have a client fill out a form in the lobby, pass it to them, and they'll whack it in some software and write a will. That happens a lot. And people come to us, having gone through that experience and paid $800 for that experience. Now needing to update that will and the lawyer telling them it's another 600 to make the update. So I think that we're way better than better than nothing. We are not an estate planning attorney by any means, but there are many A lawyers who are offering services that are not that good either.
Nicole Garton 00:34:00 There may be lawyers that might disagree with that, but oh, I'll leave that for them to share their opinions in the courtroom.
Tim Hewson 00:34:08 You know what? And those the lawyers who disagree with that, I'm not referring to those. Right. I'm referring to the lawyers that our clients are coming to us having had that experience. And I defy any lawyer to sit there and say, you know what? We're all amazing.
Tim Hewson 00:34:21 We're all amazing wills and estates lawyers.
Nicole Garton 00:34:23 So I would just say as a member of the as a member of the legal profession, I would say the vast majority of my colleagues are extremely hardworking, conscientious, competent people that obviously want to do the very, very best for their clients. And the vast majority of lawyers, if it's not in their area of expertise, will be the first ones to say that, and I'll leave it at that. Why don't we do a pivot of a big issue in tech right now, which is security. So even the most robust systems. You know, huge fortune 100 companies have been hacked. You know, the government systems have been hacked. You know, clients are entering a lot of highly sensitive personal and financial information. What kind of checks and balances do you have in place to make sure that their information remains secure?
Tim Hewson 00:35:16 Yeah. Thank you for the pivot. Maybe that was getting a little bit touchy. so our wheels do not exist on our platform. We don't store Will's.
Tim Hewson 00:35:25 When somebody steps to our service, they answer a series of questions, and the answers to those questions are encrypted. And it's only at the point when that person says, compile my document. The answers to those questions are then aggregated, and that document is compiled on the fly. We don't store it as a PDF. It doesn't exist as a PDF. There are only two circumstances where we also can generate the will, we offer a service to print and ship the will to somebody. So if they choose to do that, then that gets unlocked on our side. We can then compile the document and print and ship it to them. And we also have a service where we will actually have a lawyer review the document for an additional fee. And if they choose to do that, then again the document gets compiled and it can be reviewed by the lawyer. But other than that, the documents do not exist on our system.
Nicole Garton 00:36:21 So what happens to the data that people entered like, does that get deleted or how do you keep that data from ending up in a third party sense?
Tim Hewson 00:36:30 Well, it's encrypted, so when the person logs into their account with their user ID and password, that encrypts their information, and then they can view it if somebody went in by another door.
Tim Hewson 00:36:44 So it's as secure as a person's user ID and password. So yes, if somebody uses the password and their user ID is their first and last name, that's not great. We do also have two factor authentication. So somebody chose to log in. They're going to get a six digit Pin to their phone. But the only way that data can be seen is if they log in with their user ID and password. So it doesn't exist. Like the answer to the question do you want everything to go to your spouse? Is an answer to a question. It's not a document.
Nicole Garton 00:37:15 So let's talk about there's other entrants in the market. Now. So back in 2001 you were the trailblazers. But now we've got willful epilogue, trust and Will. So tell me about those competitors. Like how do you compare and contrast. Is it a similar process. Is it similar service in price or do you have niches in the market?
Tim Hewson 00:37:38 I think we've all approached it slightly differently. I think we're friendly with each other because ultimately all of us have got the same mandate.
Tim Hewson 00:37:47 There's 65% of adults who don't have a will. All of us are trying to educate the public in helping them to understand why it's important to have the will. We don't necessarily have to aggressively compete against each other. If we're all part of that education process, and all of us are trying to manage the flexibility within the service with the complexity, right. And you have to allow people or decide on what level of options you're going to give people while still trying to keep the service simple to use. And I think we've all drawn a different line. I think that with our service, we don't really restrict people in their distribution plans, but that's at the cost of potentially being a little bit more complicated to work through. It might take you a little bit longer to work through our service. Other services Is might say, you know what? 90% of people are going to want to do this. If we just give them this option, then it's going to be an easier experience to get through it. So we've all decided to take a slightly different approach there.
Nicole Garton 00:38:53 And tell me about price point. Like to get say a couple is going to do two wills, two powers of attorney and two health care agreements. What would be the rough cost of that? And is the price similar across competitors or does it differ?
Tim Hewson 00:39:09 We have different pricing structures, so ours comes out initially as the most affordable. Like our. If you wanted a couples package for a complete estate plan, you would have those three documents each, so you'd end up with six documents. Our service is $149 to prepare those six documents. Other service providers are more expensive, but they may give you a longer runway to make update. So with our service, you get one year of unlimited updates to those documents. And if you want to make updates beyond that year, you can choose whether or not to maintain an account with us. And if you do that, you will pay either an annual subscription or multiple years five years of updates for $29 or something like that. So we structure it a little bit differently, but initially there's no requirement to maintain an account with us.
Tim Hewson 00:39:59 But initially we're the most affordable. But we're I think we're the only one that does an annual subscription to maintain the account.
Nicole Garton 00:40:07 So that seems pretty cost effective. And do you foresee that pricing staying the same or, you know, with increased complexity and or security issues, or how do you see that going forward?
Tim Hewson 00:40:20 We don't have to increase our prices. We don't have external investors who are trying to squeeze profitability out of us. Our mandate is to make will writing accessible to as many people as we can. So it's an ongoing discussion around whether like I will service starts at $49. If we increase that price to $79. Are we pricing anybody out? Who wanted to otherwise prepare a will? But now 79 has become too expensive for them. We do have that conversation because we really don't want to price people out. Although if we're price too low, there could be a perception that we're not that good and we kind of stand by our product. We think it's a very, very strong product and service and we're probably underpriced.
Tim Hewson 00:41:06 I would say at this point.
Nicole Garton 00:41:07 Because I would say, you know, for a typical family coming in to see a lawyer, two wills, two enduring powers of attorney to representation agreements for health care, I think a typical fee would be around $3000 for legal services. So there is a differential.
Tim Hewson 00:41:25 Certainly I think there's a different customer experience, though, quite frankly, that's somebody going in there and they may meet with you have many hours of conversations with you, multiple meetings with you. It's not a like for like right.
Nicole Garton 00:41:37 So it is a different experience. Let's talk about disruption. So obviously AI is huge and making headlines. And I understand you're integrating AI into your processes. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how AI works right now for you and what your plans are going forward?
Tim Hewson 00:41:57 We don't use AI to write wills. It's not there. It can't be done, or at least not consistently. So it's not there. So we use it primarily at this point for customer service.
Tim Hewson 00:42:08 We use an AI chatbot to front end our customer service. We do have live people, but we found that there are too many questions coming up time and time and time again. So we can answer many of those with AI. So we do front end our call center and we find end our text chat with AI. We are monitoring AI. When it's ready we'll be there, but it's absolutely. We've explored it and it is not ready quite yet to write people's wills for them, you know.
Nicole Garton 00:42:39 So there's a lot of people that are making sort of bold assertions that AI may eradicate half of entry level white collar jobs. And, you know, AI is going to massively disrupt, you know, industries, including the legal industry, in a few years. Do you foresee a robot can essentially draft our wills, or do you think we're still going to need a lot of human oversight?
Tim Hewson 00:43:02 So I'm not a futurist, but I've seen what AI has done over the last year or two. I think it's going to be really difficult for AI to replace what you do in terms of an estate plan, a $3,000 bespoke package for a client.
Tim Hewson 00:43:19 It's going to be a long, long, long, long time before AI can do something like that. If lawyers are using software to generate their wills right now, I think that software can quite easily be replaced by AI at some point. Ultimately, right now, AI has some aberrations and somebody needs to check for those aberrations, right? It does weird stuff, and I'm not thinking that those things aren't going to be addressed. I mean, they will be addressed. But, so at some point AI will be consistent enough. But if somebody ultimately needs somebody to check it over, you can't get AI to check over AI. So somebody is going to take a human touch for the foreseeable future.
Nicole Garton 00:44:06 It was interesting. I was reading an article just this morning about how KPMG has implemented AI and that they invested, you know, a hundred pages of a prompt in hours and hours and hours of very senior practitioners to basically train a ring fenced AI system with all their tax knowledge and what might have taken two weeks they can now generate and in a couple of hours for a client in terms of a tax plan, but you still need that senior practitioner to read it to make sure that it is accurate, comprehensive and correct.
Nicole Garton 00:44:43 And I think that's the scary thing about AI is that you can be lulled into complacency because it's extremely confidently wrong often.
Tim Hewson 00:44:52 So I can give you an example.
Nicole Garton 00:44:54 To a to a layperson, to an intelligent layperson that doesn't have, say, 20 years of expertise as an accountant or a lawyer. They're just simply not going to have all those years to recognize that there is an enormous gap or a hallucination or an judgment. And I think that's the fear that senior practitioners have, is that intelligently, people are going to be lulled into complacency by what seems very confidently or sophisticated, that you're wrong And that you still are going to need that senior person. I think what we're worried about in the professions is a lot of the rote, sort of menial data entry, due diligence piece. AI does that beautifully, which is what our entry level employees sort of get their chops and experience on. And so if we're automating that, great. But what's going to happen in terms of our ability to train junior people that are going to become those 20 year practitioners.
Nicole Garton 00:45:57 And I think we're in real time. We're figuring out that answer. But it will be interesting to see the evolution of this and where it ends up.
Tim Hewson 00:46:05 I can give you an example, like just using it in our customer service. We trained it. We put all of our support tickets into our system. It was ring fenced. It's not just open AI, it's our AI system. And we trained it all up. And then somebody would ask the AI chatbot, do you have a discount for seniors? And they said, yeah, we do. Just put in the discount code SENIOR15 for a 15% discount. We don't have that. We never have that. It just made it up. And so how? Well, how did you think about that? Like, where did that come from. So yeah, that that can happen is just weird stuff that can happen. And what my experience of AI is that people only understand where it's not very good in their own specific area of expertise.
Tim Hewson 00:46:53 It seems good in every other area except for their one area of expertise. So that gives you an idea that it's not quite where it needs to be right now.
Nicole Garton 00:47:02 And I think, you know, what did they say? Artificial general intelligence AGI that people argue how far away we are away from that. But it is interesting because I think the brilliant software people that created these tools, I don't know that they completely understand how it's working either. And the hallucinations, you know, our perplexing injury. And so, you know, it has great promise. And it's democratizing a lot of things. But, you know, there's huge dangers. So it'll be interesting to watch that. So you've been in this space for like a really long time. Like, you know, a quarter of a century, like, you know, you say you're not a futurist, but what are you excited about? Like, where do you see this going and in the future?
Tim Hewson 00:47:48 So I like on the technical side, I would like to see more adoption of digital technologies, electronic signing and storage of wills I think is critical.
Tim Hewson 00:47:57 So I'd like to see that happen. When we started LegalWills in 2001, we thought digital signatures was going to be a thing. It's taken forever. So on that side, I would like some advancements done there, but I would also like to see more of a team or a coming together of legal communities and online world writing tools. I think there's a huge opportunity there, even for law firms to front end their service with a service like ours, so that people can familiarize themselves with their will, work through it. Prior to a meeting with a Wills and Estates lawyer or an estate planning lawyer. So I think there's opportunities for that divide to be closed a little bit. I see the evolution of our service working more with lawyers and I, and I think that would be a really positive progression for the client ultimately for the end user.
Nicole Garton 00:48:56 So what I'm hearing is, you know, democratization of the service, servicing more people that they've got their plans done, and then identifying people that need more specialized advice and making sure that they're seeing the professionals that they need to see it.
Nicole Garton 00:49:12 Is that what you see?
Tim Hewson 00:49:13 Yeah. But also, I mean, I think this can help law firms. So somebody's not just walking through the door And you say, okay, Mr. Jones, tell me about yourself. That's not a great interaction. And it allows that's that opportunity for a person to walk out, get home and think, man, I completely forgot about that charitable bequest. I think there's opportunities there to make the experience of a client and a lawyer just a better experience. By using a service like ours to allow somebody to learn about the process and the will, and also explore their own needs ahead of that meeting.
Nicole Garton 00:49:50 So what's your legacy? You were a trailblazer. You know, you're certainly a leader in this industry. What are you hoping your legacy is in this area? But people will say, you know, Tim led, you know, access to justice or facilitated people. What do you want people to say about your contribution and your business?
Tim Hewson 00:50:14 I would be flattered if people talked about me after I'm gone.
Tim Hewson 00:50:17 I don't expect that. But I think that there's one particular part of our service that we introduced about ten years ago, and it's when we heard a report that said that the number of charitable bequests is like in 3% of wills. But if the Will writer prompted people at that time of distribution, then that can double and the size of the bequest can double. And so we actually added a page within our service at the point of distribution of the estate to specifically ask if people wanted to include a charitable bequest. And yes, we've done 500,000 wills, but we now know that about 15% of those included a charitable bequest. And we actually did a study, and that was about $500 million in charitable bequests that have been left or Planned, pledged based on people who have used our service. So I think that if we've made a difference to, you know, I could say, well, you know, a whole bunch of those people otherwise wouldn't have had a will. Yeah. Okay. But I think that the difference that we've made, hopefully to charities and organizations, because every single person who dies without a will has no charitable legacy.
Tim Hewson 00:51:40 And so encouraging more people to wait and then include a planned bequest. I'd like to think that we helped contribute to that.
Nicole Garton 00:51:47 Well that's amazing. Well, I guess they might have a charitable legacy of it as cheats to the Crown. So, listeners, I guess if you consider that charitable. But listeners might not know this, but if somebody is extremely rare, but if somebody passes away and they really have no close kinship or relatives, their state can possibly cheat, i.e. pay to the crown. So, you know, I don't think anybody thinks, oh, I'm going to work hard my whole life. And when I die, the government gets it. I don't I don't know if.
Tim Hewson 00:52:21 I think there's a difference.
Nicole Garton 00:52:22 People consider that successful.
Tim Hewson 00:52:23 But giving it to a downtown mission compared to giving it to a crown, there's a there's a big difference.
Nicole Garton 00:52:28 Right, right. So your hope is that from 3% to 15% that you will facilitate people, you know, not just giving money to their relatives or intended beneficiaries, but they will consider charitable organizations that mean something to them and give back to the community.
Nicole Garton 00:52:45 Is that what your hope is?
Tim Hewson 00:52:47 And we've done campaigns to say, leave 1% of your estate, 2% like something like that. Your family and loved ones aren't going to notice that 1% was taken out, but that 1% of your estate can actually make a big difference to a food co-op in your neighborhood, right?
Nicole Garton 00:53:03 So that's great. I would say to people listening, if you have charitable intent, first and foremost, that should drive your wishes, but it's also something to know that it's very tax efficient. So if you leave money in your will to a qualified doner, which means a charity that the CRA recognizes, your state actually gets a tax receipt. And when people pass away, it's a I think what. Death and taxes are the sadly the only certainties. But when you die, it can be very expensive because you're deemed to have sold everything you own the moment you die. And if you've got, you know, a big RRSP or recreational property, you could have quite a significant tax bill in your estate.
Nicole Garton 00:53:48 And if you leave money to charity, you get a receipt for 100% of that donation. And you can often get back almost $0.50 on the dollar of your donation in terms of a tax receipt. So it's also very not it's first and foremost, you want to benefit, you know, whether it's a hospital or an arts program or, or a food program or whatever, or music or whatever it is that means a lot to you. But you also get a nice tax receipt back so it doesn't cost your beneficiaries as much as you might think. And I think I would sort of a public service announcement that I would say is, as a estate planning lawyer of many years, is that a lot of people give to the main players like they're there are sort of a handful of charities that everybody sort of thinks of, and they do incredible good often in health and in the community. And that's great. But there's a lot of amazing charities that do great work. And so, you know, the vast majority of money goes to, in my experience, to sort of 5 or 6 of the main players, but consider other very worthwhile organizations that mean a lot to because they also provide good service.
Nicole Garton 00:55:03 And let's try to let's try to spread the benefit. I would Suggest that. And it's funny how little people sometimes think about this because I, you know, people would be in my office and the classic example would be often people that don't have children, they might not think of themselves as high net worth people, but if they've managed to purchase a home and pay it off and managed to have some savings, their estate often can be like quite a healthy estate. And it surprises me how little forethought people have thought like I'll say, okay, so you know, what would you like to do with the estate? And people would be, well, what do you think I should do? It's like, well, you know, what is it? Is it art? Is it nature? Is it education? Is it health? It like, you know, what is it? And you know, often I would be just like googling right at my office. And so I encouraged people to, to think about this because you're exactly right.
Nicole Garton 00:56:01 Even what you may think of as, as relatively small gifts can make an enormous impact on animals or education or whatever it is. That means a lot to you. So it's I hope people can put more forethought into that. And yeah, because we work really hard and as we know, the cost of living is crazy. And it's an enormous amount of work in a lifetime to build assets. So it would be nice that that people can think about the legacy that they leave.
Tim Hewson 00:56:28 And that you touch on another point. I mean, some people, I think, with the cost of living crisis, they may feel that at the end of a month, they may not have been as charitable as they might have liked to have been. So it's actually a very low impact way for you to give to charity as well. Right. So you could say, you know, when it gets to my tax returns, I sometimes look at it and think it's done a bit better there. I really could have done a bit better with my charity.
Tim Hewson 00:56:55 And so yeah, including it in a will so it's without a will is nothing. So the first step is write the will. And then if you write the will it's a really good opportunity. And I say this all the time. Writing your will is an opportunity. So yeah, to be charitable is a is a really good reason to buy the will.
Nicole Garton 00:57:13 Well it's been an absolute pleasure, Tim, to speak with you. Is there anything you'd like to leave our listeners with before we sign off?
Tim Hewson 00:57:20 I don't think so. I really appreciate the question. Yeah. Like, oftentimes we talk about just generally talk about, the importance of a will. But to get into this where our service sits in the options to writing a will is a is an interesting discussion. I've enjoyed it. And, I hope that your listeners see a place for I don't want it to be antagonistic between a service like ours and the legal profession. It's not. We both serve different clients, and I think there's a place for all.
Tim Hewson 00:57:58 And I think we can as is, as even a place for us to work together more.
Nicole Garton 00:58:03 That's I completely agree. So thank you so much, Tim, for your time and for sharing your wisdom.
Tim Hewson 00:58:09 Great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Nicole.
Nicole Garton 00:58:11 This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered individual, legal, financial or tax advice. Make sure to consult the advisor of your choice to advise you on your own circumstances. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Your Estate Matters. If you like this podcast, make sure to follow it on your podcast platform of choice. Whether you're planning your own estate or you're acting as executor for somebody else's heritage, trust can help partner with Heritage Trust to protect your family, your assets, and your legacy. If you'd like more information about Heritage Trust, please visit our website at Heritage Trust Company.
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