LawHawk Blog

Estate planning, particularly the creation of wills and enduring powers of attorney (EPAs), is an underappreciated field requiring a lot of expertise.

Lawyers and legal executives often invest extensive hours researching, verifying, and customising clauses for wills, all while managing the heavy administrative load of gathering and inputting data into multiple documents for various individuals.

It doesn't have to be this hard, though.

Embracing technological advancements has transformed the process of will and EPA creation for modern firms wanting to adopt the most efficient processes and provide the best outcomes for their clients.

In this post, we delve into why leading industry players are now turning to software solutions for the streamlined creation of even the most intricate documents, specifically focusing on wills and EPA documents.

This article focuses on specific document automation software, not the basic functionality you get in practice management systems, which is often marketed as if it has the same capabilities.

As I noted in my earlier blog (Half of Kiwis over 18 don’t have a will – what are we going to do about it?), a lot of New Zealanders don't have wills.  It's not really clear why that is, but one reason is that a lot of people think they haven't got enough assets to make it worthwhile.

With the growth of KiwiSaver balances, that is often not the case.  Average KiwiSaver balances are now approaching $15,000, which is the threshold for administration of an estate without a will.  Above that figure, and the family has to go to court to have someone appointed as the administrator.  Stuff recently drew attention to this issue, and also to the free will that we recently launched with Matt Hay.

You see see the Stuff story here, or read it in full below. You can try the free will here.