Remote Signing of Estate and Personal Planning Documents during COVID-19

As we have seen, COVID-19 has greatly disrupted services which must be conducted in person, and these include signing your will, estate planning, power of attorney, or representation agreement. BC law requires that these documents be witnessed and specifically precludes signing them electronically.  As such, it seemed uncertain how persons needing them could create these documents while practicing social distancing.

Thankfully, the BC Government addressed this on May 19, 2020 with orders under the Emergency Program Act allowing signing and witnessing “in each other’s electronic presence” during the time that the provincial state of emergency is in effect, and provided that a lawyer or notary acts as witness. Instead of coming into our office, now all you need is a printer, and we can meet with you via video conferencing software such as Zoom, Facetime or Skype to sign.

As the province begins to reopen, we recognize our continued, collective responsibility to prevent transmission and are encouraging electronic witnessing as above wherever possible.  Please don’t hesitate to contact the Segev team with any questions or to get started on your estate planning.