Online and video witnessing of wills
27 March 2020

I hope you are all managing to adjust to our new world.
I just thought I would share out some of the debates that are happening concerning will witnessing. Issues continue to be debated (particularly across the water) on this topic. I attach here two links to the debate. The first is from the UK’s Gazette:
The article here states that talks are afoot to change the legislation to lighten the formalities in respect of will execution.
The Scottish Law Society have gone a bit further, and are recommending that Skype or other video conferencing facilities be allowable. I attach a link from the STEP website:
If you can’t link directly from here, try to cut and paste the links to your browser.
As I mentioned last week, it would appear that these types of issues are not as high a priority for the Government as obviously health and economic big ticket items. However, I am sure that you are experiencing an increased level of will enquiries and obviously this is a matter of significant concern for our clients.
We will watch this space.