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hey there estate planning attorney paul radley here again and in this video we're going to talk about whether the signing of your will and other estate planning documents should be videoed all right so here's the deal video is everywhere these days from a legal perspective you know depositions are videoed heck from a criminal perspective many shootings these days are videoed thefts in department stores they're all caught on video police wear body cams and quite frankly anytime something interesting happens and anybody's around you're gonna see a whole bunch of people just immediately pull out their smartphone and start videoing it's everywhere and you know the technology is really good and it continues to improve i don't think video is going anywhere i think it's going to be around for a long time by the way this is my wife's cute case here it's not my phone so um and and with the large number of estates being contested these days you know i think it was dear abby who said if you want to if you want really want to get to know somebody share an inheritance with them you know when somebody dies there's often this big pie that's out there and for one reason or another people who are entitled to a piece of the pie want a bigger piece of the pie and then there are some people who aren't entitled to any of the pie they want some pie so there's lots of estates that are contested either you know the allegations being made often are the the person who signed the will didn't have the required capacity to understand what they were doing or a lot of estate contests uh where people allege that hey my father was influenced by you when he signed his will that's undue influence his will is invalid or some people contesting the the fact that some validity requirements were not met maybe they are alleging that you know the witnesses didn't actually see the person sign the will but they just you know signed on a witness line outside of the person who signed the wheels presence so and and then there's other reasons why people can test wheels so the question really becomes you know does it does it make sense to video the wheel signing and there are perhaps um some valid reasons to video you know the the circumstances surrounding the signing of the will perhaps it can be better proven that the notary and the witnesses were present at the time that the person signed their will but there's quite frankly there's a there's a bunch of reasons not to video someone signing the wheel and the circumstances surround that because you know video can give a a false appearance of of health or nervousness or confusion you know anytime you put an old person and maybe i shouldn't say old person maybe i just say anybody but quite frankly most people who you know get serious about estate planning and and kind of wonder whether things should be be videoed most of them are older people and and when you put an older person in an unfamiliar location like a lawyer's office while that person is uncomfortable because they're in front of the camera and the lights you know really any any stutter any hesitation any confusion as to things like you know the date that they're signing or where they have to sign on the documents if that's all captured on video it's likely to be used by the person who wants to challenge the wheel or the will's validity so you know i you know what in in my 29 years of doing this i attempted you know one video of a person signing the wheel it was a circumstance where the gentleman he his capacity was good but he was just convinced that a certain person or two was going to challenge things when he passed away and so he's like i want my you know our signing and all the circumstances around it videoed and so you know we we gonna set it up and before we turned on any cameras he and i were having an excellent conversation sharp as attack but as soon as we turned on those cameras boy he he froze up and he messed up up on what uh well you know what day of the month it was heck quite frankly i don't even know what day of the month it is right now so and he just he looked uncomfortable he answered a couple of questions incorrectly i said nope we're not going to do this so we didn't do it and that was just the one time i attempted it in in over 29 years thousands if not tens of thousands of of me supervising all of these all of these will signings so in general i'm gonna tell you no not a good idea to video the will signing let me give you a couple of other circumstances though some people might argue well hey the fact that you didn't video that will signing that must be some evidence that things are are bad and you're trying to to to withhold you know some some evidence there's just no merit to that argument i i could see if it was common practice for estate planning attorneys to videotape all of their will signings then maybe if they didn't then that might be you know they're trying to hide something but i don't know i don't know one attorney in this country or in this world who regularly videotapes their wheel signings so you know it just it just it's not common practice so there's not an appearance that you're trying to hide something if you don't videotape the uh the wheel signing now i will also mention in a related context in my state louisiana during covet our governor signed a proclamation where notaries can notarize documents by video they don't have to be in the same room however that proclamation or that order excludes the signing or notarization of wills and trusts and donations so forget about that and then another little side note there's a few states and and louisiana is one of them i think we did it in 2007 where we provided a statute that says the the videotape execution of a will can be admissible in court if a will is contested um but i've never seen anybody use it it's a it's a cumbersome statute the person signing the wheel has to take an oath on videotape by a person authorized to to take oaths and there's some other requirements that make it just cumbersome i'm not saying that statute has never been used by a lawyer who um needed or wanted to videotape a person signing a will i just don't know of anyone who's ever done it and if it was commonplace i would have heard that at least one person took advantage of that so we don't see people using that statute um now there's some other circumstances where people have wanted and kind of insisted uh the use of videotape just a couple of days ago i was talking to a gentleman who i'm working with to help him get his estate legal affairs in order what he said he was going to do and i don't even know that i could talk him out of it he was so you know adamant about it was after we get all of his estate legal documents customized signed you know notarized witness all done then he's going to arrange to have maybe a kind of little meeting or at his house and all his kids are gonna be there and he said he's gonna pull out the gopro and he's going to record you know what he his explanation of what he's done and maybe even more importantly why he did what he did he wanted his kids his family to understand the the reasonings behind you know what we he and i are working together to to build for his family and that transition to the next generation so he just he he that was because that is going to accomplish two things one it's gonna communicate in person the why he's doing what he's doing to his children which i think is a great idea and then second he's gonna have that on videotape so maybe 10 20 years from now if you know if the kids want to revisit that and take a look at that that might better refresh their minds as to why he did what he did maybe that's a good thing that he's videoing that family meeting maybe it's not you know well i guess the future will tell so i would say every circumstance is unique but the general rule is no video in the signing of the will the trust the powers of attorney all those you know customized to state legal instruments no video you often does more harm than good but again like i say every circumstance is unique but what i would recommend is that i highly recommend however that you smash the like button that tells the youtube algorithms show paul's videos to more people so maybe other people won't make the mistake of videoing their will signing incorrectly and then the other suggestion if you haven't done already you know heck why not it's free hit the subscribe button and the notification bell that way you won't miss anything in the future because i hope you enjoy watching these videos as much as i enjoy making them because i got a lot more content to share and and create and uh really goal here is to enable you to do what you need to do have peace of mind that you've protected yourself protected your family we'll see you next time