Sign Banking Presentation Alabama Fast

Industry sign banking alabama presentation fast

hello everybody uh today i have a short presentation on the proper execution of a last will and testament in the state of alabama now i have previously talked about how you can have virtual notarizations and witnessing pursuant to a special emergency proclamation issued by governor ivy related to the pandemic that we're under and and that is possible assuming you follow those circumstances but today's presentation is not about that today's presentation is about the standard i want to call it normal the pre-pandemic normal where a last will and testament was executed in the presence generally of a two witnesses and a notary public i'm asked about this from time to time i've done this probably hundreds of times myself i've been practicing law for 35 years and so i'm old i've done it a bunch and occasionally i'll be asked about someone executing a last will and testament not in my presence but in someone else's presence and and i've had notaries that have asked me about this type of um execution and what they should look for or um just generally i've had situations where i've before the pandemic before virtual notarization and witnessing was permissible where a client has asked me maybe i'm in birmingham my client's in mobile or huntsville and i have emailed the documents to them they printed them out comfortable with them and want to go ahead and execute them before we can get together and so i've sent them information on how to do that so today's presentation is going to be concerning that kind of kind of thing let me go ahead and share my screen with you and let's see if we can uh get started with uh with this execution of a self-proved will in alabama now i didn't mention the type of will in my little introduction and a self-proved will is a particular type of will and this particular type of will is one that requires the testator two witnesses and a notary and to follow a special procedure outlined by the code of alabama and i'm going to talk about that uh here in just a minute you don't have to have a will doesn't have to be self-proved in order to be a valid will it can just be signed by a testator and witnessed by two witnesses however problems arise in uh in that event uh let's look at the law first and then i'll talk about that in just a second code of alabama statute section 43-8-132 basically is the self-proved will statue i would say 99 of all wills prepared by an attorney if not more than that our self-proved wills and that's a good thing if you do not have a self-proved will if you have a will that is signed by the testator and witnessed but not notarized then it may be a valid will but you have a problem and the problem is that you cannot conclusively presume the validity of the execution and the signatures on that particular will without having a court hearing and a judge to he take evidence and hear testimony and make a decision as to whether or not that will was properly executed and those signatures are valid and not the product of improper influence or any number of different things picture this willis prepared 1998 22 years later testator dies where are those witnesses if it's not a self-proved will you got to go find those witnesses from 22 years ago i've had to try to find them from longer than that can you do it it can be difficult and if you can find them you may have another problem do they even remember the circumstances surrounding that particular wheel execution do they remember the testator maybe they worked in a law office or a bank or someplace else and actually witnessed a number of different things or maybe they witnessed it but it wasn't somebody they really knew they met him for the first time for purposes of that will execution and they just signed it um and and went on the self-proved will statute prevents a lot of these problems because it says that if you follow the correct procedure the will signatures will be presumed to be valid without the necessity of having a court hearing so uh let's i know this is what you you came for let's go ahead and look at uh what the law is as it relates to the execution and what you need to be looking for um the first one and i'm gonna a couple things i'm gonna skip over this pretty quickly the law pretty quickly and focus on the execution if you want the law be glad to send it to you can probably find it or you can just rewind it and pull it from from this presentation and the powerpoint slides but uh generally the uh the law requires for self-proved will for an oath to be given administered by a notary by an officer authorized to administer oaths being the notary under the laws of the state of alabama and the oath is being given to both the testator and the witnesses first part is the testator's signature and what i generally recommend is just reading this i the testator i jane doe whoever the testator sign my name to this instrument this blank day of blank and i pulled this directly from the statute so that's why it says 19 something rather than 2-0 something because it's been around for a long time and being first duly sworn to hereby declare to the undersigned authority that's you as the notary if you're in the notary uh that i sign and execute this instrument as my last will and then i sign it willingly there's a parenthetical there i'm not going to focus on i'll say that for another presentation or willingly direct another to sign it for me i'll talk about you know naughty problems and tricky situations in another presentation but today's going to be your kind of normal one that i sign it willingly that i execute as my free and voluntary act uh and then i'm 18 years of age or older so basically by them signing this they are swearing that all these things are true which is part of the statute itself second part is the witnesses signature and again witnesses signatures are going to look like uh this and i'll pull this directly from the statute as well uh at the end of today's presentation i'll show you what one of mine looks like in uh in a real live wheel i just took the names out with uh with that i hope i took the names out i did um and you have the witnesses that are signing after first being duly sworn they declare the testator signs and executes it as his last will he's if you notice this it says he sings it willingly again that's their typo from the statute not mine um i have uh oops going to go back i have corrected that in my particular forms that i that i use i'm not saying i'm perfect but at least i don't have that typo in in my particular form uh as they do in the the statute and uh you see the rest of it the witnesses go ahead and sign and then your portion and again if you're if you've been asked to notarize a will all of this should already be in the form this just you know in the will itself i'm just trying to go over it to make sure that you're comfortable with it it should look a little bit like this probably will look a little more like the will form that i use that i'll show you at the end of today's presentation but this again came directly from the statute uh the notary uh subscribe sworn to and acknowledged before me by your name uh the test i'm sorry bob blank the testator jane doe whoever the testator is not your name and subscribed and sworn to me before um by blank and blank witnesses those blanks are a lot longer than that in most forms uh because you need more than that to write uh franklin w whipple stepper whoever the witness is this blank day of blank and then uh your signature and then official capacity of officer no republic i usually have no republic and then pre-printed my commission expires and have a place for the notary to actually handwrite it and write in the expiration date of their commission in the event that it's not pre-printed on their stamp or whatever they're they're using okay um that's your normal kind of situation i do want to go ahead and point out something else that comes up from time to time and you may need to help educate the attorney if you have a circumstance like this let's say that you've been asked to notarize a will but you arrive in and dog on it the the witnesses and the testator have already signed so they did not sign it in front of you all is not lost you can still have a valid self-proved will pursuant to the statute you go to sub-section b of the statute and it says that an attested will one that's been signed and witnessed may at any time subsequent to its execution meaning after it's been signed be made self-proved by the acknowledgement by the testator and the affidavits of the witnesses each made before an officer authorized in minister blah blah blah the notary that those things occurred in substantially the following form so it looks a little bit different but we blank and blank blank blank and blank the witnesses the testator and the witness says respectively whose names are signed and attached or foregoing instrument being first duly sworn do hereby declare to the undersign that the testator signed and executed the instrument asked his last one and that he had signed it willingly or willingly directed another to sign for him and that he executed it as his free involuntary act blah blah blah now you really want to be slick and have this in your traveling kit might not be a bad idea to have this pre-typed and pre-printed and just have it with you in the event that you ever are called to notarize something that's already been signed a will that's already been signed and witnessed as i said all is not lost but you've got to use this particular form you see that i say lawyers should determine yes the lawyer should determine but you might want to uh have a conversation with the lawyer if if they ask you to notarize and say hey i can't notarize their signatures under the form that you've given me that first one that we looked at because it says they are signing it in front of me they're acknowledging before me uh as they they do that however uh take a look at this and see if this won't work i understand that this came from the statute and you can even have a copy of the statute handy might not be a bad idea and again you have this pre-printed just state of alabama county of blank as um as you know that's where your feet are and uh so that county may change depending on if you're traveling or not and then have blanks for the testator's name and the witnesses so that those can be handwritten in and uh and then if that's the case you can have the testator and witness um and again you'd have to have this portion typed to two i just have extra copies of it if you were going to do a bunch of this three or four extra copies and hope it never comes up and it was just three or four extra pages that you never ended up having to use uh but you have a testator and the witnesses signatures and then your uh subscribes sworn to an acknowledged by me portion as well and again you would only use this second part in the hopefully rare circumstance where they call you to notarize a will that's already been signed and witnessed they didn't do what they were supposed to do guess what lawyers screw up all the time they do that kind of thing all the time uh if you can help them out you may have a client for life if that's the case you know hey look i can't do this that's not proper uh however you know i understand that i'm gonna go back up for just a second i understand that i can use this particular form instead why don't you read it here's the statute this is my understanding of what i'm supposed to do in the event that it has already been signed and already been witnessed uh if you are in agreement with that we'll uh we'll go ahead and i'll administer the oath to the testator and to the witnesses and have them sign and i'll go ahead and notarize now if either if you follow the procedure properly in either a or b the consequences are that compliance with the signature requirements under the law is conclusively presumed you don't have that court hearing you don't have to go the lawyer doesn't have to go and track down witnesses from 20 25 years ago and hope they hey they can find the witness and even more hope that they remember the circumstances so uh it's a wonderful thing if uh if that's the case if uh if you have a self-proved will now um i said that i would we'll let you take a look at one of mine and we'll let you do that right now and uh here you go uh this is a an example of um of one of mine and how that i do it jane doe let me make that correction on the fly um the testator sign my name you'll see it's very very similar it's almost identical i typically and i do this for a particular reason that i'm not going to really go into here but you notice that i actually use 19 years of age or older if i ever have someone that's 18 and they're signing a will which is valid in the state of alabama i'll change that i haven't done one for an 18 year old everyone i've ever done one for has been over the age of 19 19 years or older usually substantially older than that um and then but this is probably what it will look like in the event that you're actually doing one for a for a client for um uh witnessing or notarizing a will you'll have the the uh uh hopefully it'll be filled in you wanna make sure that it's dated then the testator is gonna sign the witness names need to be hand written in here and then signed this portion here with the address of the witness is not required by the statute most lawyer forms that i have seen including my own have a place for the address of the witness and the reason for that is just in the wild situation where somebody's alleging fraud or something like that and you have to find the witness anyway you might have a way of kind of tracking them down maybe maybe not most of the time they have it it's not required not required by statute and then you have your portion which is the notary section the county the state and the county and then you have the uh and you see it here jane doe the testator's name is is actually typed in usually that's the case because you know who the testator is the lawyer who writes the will knows who the testator is usually they don't know who the witnesses are going to be so you have blanks for the witnesses those need to be filled out and indated and then of course the notary with my commission expires at a particular particular time so in any event um i hope that uh that that has been helpful for for you if you have any questions if i can ever help you feel free to give me a call my telephone number is there uh and my email address in the event that you want to receive something such as the the statute if you wanted to see that i gave the reference to it i think you can find it just fine but uh in the event that you cannot locate that or uh if you need a copy of something uh that is on here feel free to contact me anyway hope you have a good day and again hope this was helpful bye