Fiduciary Law | COVID-19 Update
Members of the Fiduciary Law Section:
I hope all Section members are doing well and staying safe. This email is intended to update you regarding the efforts of the Section’s leadership to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
During these uncertain times, many Georgians – particularly the elderly and the infirm – understandably have heightened concerns about their estate planning. This has led to an increased sense of anxiety and urgency regarding preparing or updating estate planning documents, particularly wills and advance directives. As you likely saw, Governor Kemp issued an Executive Order on March 31, 2020, permitting e-notarization for real estate transactions. Some of you undoubtedly are wondering where that leaves us with regard to the execution of fiduciary documents.
In response to numerous inquiries we have received on this subject and our own experiences in attempting to balance our clients’ legal needs with their physical safety during this trying period, the leadership of the Fiduciary Law Section (with heavy lifting from our Code Revision Committee Chair Nick Djuric and our Legislation Committee Chair Kyle King) has been working on measures to address remote witnessing of wills, advance directives, and other fiduciary documents on an emergency basis during the current crisis. We have been in daily communication with the folks at the State Bar, to whom the Governor’s office is looking for guidance.
We hope there will be additional progress to report soon. However, we didn’t want to let this week expire without letting you all know that we are doing everything we can to finalize a proposal that will be acceptable to the Governor’s office and the Section members.
Thank you,
Margaret Scott, Chair
Fiduciary Law Section
State Bar of Georgia
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State Bar of Georgia
104 Marietta St. NW, Suite 100, Atlanta, GA 30303-2743
Phone – 404-527-8700 Fax – 404-527-8717