It's 2025. We're busy. We're on the move. Living our lives. Dancing and having fun.
But life---it has a time limit for all of us.
And death...it's something we don’t really like to think about (especially when we are having fun)!
But you know who thinks about death a lot? Estate planning professionals! They work with individuals and families to create the right set of instructions based on the intellectual and emotional desires of their clients---to be carried out, of course, when these clients don’t have the voice to do it anymore. Estate planning professionals have an incredible weight to bear in that way. Getting the details exactly right is vitally important---especially when someone is leaving a lifetime of assets to friends, family, and trusted charitable institutions.
Then, of course, it's getting those darned documents notarized! Some attorneys these days are using specific language and affidavits to help their clients sign wills and their entire estate plans remotely---so they can avoid the hassles (and sometimes health risks) of in-person signings. And, interestingly, trust and estate litigators have indicated that it is exceedingly rare for a will to be inadmissible in court because of a procedural element in how it was signed, thanks to the “harmless error” doctrine accepted by most courts around the US.
Enter a remote online notarization solution, proposed several years back by Patricia De Fonte, a San Francisco estate planner who serves tech-savvy families in Silicon Valley, to a group called The Best Notary. Named "Remote Online Notarization," or "RON," this system helps people finalize their estate plans and skip the in-person signings. The process provides a secure, verified .PDF with a digital audit trail & verifiable electronic signatures---as well as a video recording of the notarization that is stored indefinitely to demonstrate that the document was signed by an alert and willing signer.
Three sets of notarized documents are provided--resulting in a complete estate plan package. What's not to like? And then you can get back to your boogie (and your "woogie woogie").
The Best Notary reviews every word across every page before the client signs. Read about the multi-talented Eli Angote, CEO and Founder of The Best Notary, below:
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